


can you give me my little skull?

by pinkfen



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Alternate Universe - Zombies, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Barebacking, Biting, Bottom Mark Lee (NCT), Cat/Human Hybrids, Catboys, Coming Untouched, Creampie, Developing Relationship, Dirty Talk, Domestic Fluff, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, First Time, Found Family, Hand Jobs, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Jealousy, Just cute boyfriends, Light Angst, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Magical Realism, Masturbation, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Meet-Cute, Multiple Orgasms, Sexual Tension, Shameless Smut, Shower Sex, Slice of Life, Slow Burn, Strangers to Lovers, Tons of Sex, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Touch-Starved, Zombies, really cute side nomin and dowoo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-13
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-17 23:07:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 33,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28733202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinkfen/pseuds/pinkfen
Summary: Most humans had the ability to be zombies but Johnny was sure that Mark was the only zombie who had the ability to be human. Mark who didn’t even differentiate Johnny from a piece of furniture—Johnny must be crazy to let himself get attached. He was starting to think the zombie Mark had killed for him was a very vivid dream, but he still found traces of its blood in uncleaned corners of his bedroom floor and wall. It was knowing that inside that blank, seemingly emotionless creature, there lay a sweet-hearted boy who had risked his life on two occasions to protect Johnny’s own, who needed merely a can of cheap cat food for a reason to light up. Johnny had come to think of them as a unit, allies. Johnny and Mark against the world. No one was going to hold Mark captive and shackled except him.(Alternatively: After Mark gets bitten and half-turned because of him, it’s two years before Johnny finds the vaccine to make him fully human again. Years in which they fall in love.ORIn which Mark is Johnny's baby zombie.)[Updated with sequel chapters]
Relationships: Kim Dongyoung | Doyoung/Kim Jungwoo, Lee Jeno/Na Jaemin, Mark Lee/Suh Youngho | Johnny
Comments: 51
Kudos: 308





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The FIRST CHAPTER of this fic is a rework of my 2016 got7 fic of the same title and this time I genuinely felt it suited this pairing perfectly! I hope you’ll give it a shot, and agree :) I actually deleted the original got7 version from my gotchick account last year not bc I wasn’t proud of it, but I personally was unsatisfied with a couple of scenes which I’ve since edited to my liking. So this is the only copy of this fic that exists on the internet now, and I think you won’t have any feeling of dissonance when you read it, because I felt johnny and mark fit into the story seamlessly as if it was written for them in the first place. It was satisfying for me to be able to polish up something that I’d worked hard on back then, and release it into the world again. I really hope you’ll enjoy if you give this a chance :)
> 
> A little warning here for mild gore - raw [dead] pig meat being eaten by zombie!mark in one scene but I don’t think it’s too disturbing or explicit
> 
> eta - the original oneshot has been extended by a few chapters which are not reworked, I wrote them specifically for this pairing :) check out the total number of chapters in the description box above

Halloween is the only day of the year Johnny can take his pet zombie Mark out for a walk.

It's a pity he has to stay cooped up in the house for his own safety the rest of the time, because his pretty legs were made for walking and running, if not strutting fashion runways and catwalks. But for better or for worse, the world is still roamed by humans. The virus that caused people to mutate had been contained in a few (to his knowledge) unfortunate cases who got infected by attacking each other, but if any other of these zombies were still alive, they had disappeared under the radar since the minor outbreak two years ago, or maybe been captured by the authorities and locked away in a lab somewhere, observed and experimented on.

Johnny will never allow such a fate for Mark. He supposes that by managing to domesticate him, he has probably done the world a great service. But he doesn't really care, because he didn't do it for the world. He did it for Mark, and himself.

It was also probably only possible because Mark is only part-zombie. Johnny had quickly deduced that after the first few days of taking him in and believes he's still half-human. He knows that, more and more with every day. Sometimes it feels like Mark's old self is just locked away in this unresponsive shell, waiting to break through and come out one day in the future when the human side of him wins out.

The greatest proof is that if Mark had turned completely, Johnny would never have been able to tame him with no skill or experience whatsoever. Although he basically spends each and every day in a trance, he displays some very undeniable human characteristics that make Johnny unable to give up hoping.

*

He hopes desperately every day that the authorities or scientists or experts -- whoever is doing research on this virus, because there has to be people working on this; he can't be alone -- will find a cure soon. He can't wait. Mark can't wait. As time passes, Johnny watches as the symptoms slowly but steadily eat into his system, depleting and transforming him subtly but irreversibly. Because Mark hadn't been fully infected, the progress of the virus is slower than its normal rate in him but it's still progressing.

But wait; rewind to the beginning --

Everything had started on that uneventful but fateful day two years ago. Everything was his fault.

It was afternoon and Johnny was returning home from university with his boyfriend, Jaemin. Jaemin had been acting strangely all day, seeming pale, restless and fidgety. He kept scratching his neck as if he had an itch and was wearing a turtleneck even though it was nearly a hundred degrees out. Johnny was growing steadily more concerned, and asked Jaemin worriedly if he was okay.

Jaemin grunted but didn't meet his eyes, his replies to Johnny's questions monosyllabic in stark contrast to his usual bubbly, chatty self. He kept his distance and Johnny felt hurt, wondering if he had done something wrong and pissed Jaemin off accidentally.

Jaemin was more sensitive than usual, unusually responsive when Johnny kissed him goodbye a distance away from the school at the crossroads they parted at to go home. A pink flush spread over his skin and he let out an odd, low moan as if in pain. Encouraged and slightly aroused, Johnny allowed his hands to wander daringly from Jaemin's jaw down.

His heart had stopped when he saw the hickey, faint but definitely present, under the collar of Jaemin's turtleneck which he had pushed down with his fingers. His hands dropped from Jaemin's body as if stung. So this was what Jaemin had been hiding guiltily; why he had been acting weird all day.

"Who is it?" Johnny asked, pushing Jaemin away.

Jaemin stumbled back, still looking dazed and flushed. His eyes were flickering, pupils dilated and blown starkly wide. They seemed to be flashing from black to blue and then back again under the glare of the sun but it must have been a trick of the sunlight. "What?" he asked blankly.

Johnny's jaw clenched, his hands curling into fists by his sides. "Who are you cheating on me with?" he repeated more harshly. His heart felt like it was cracking.

"What?" Jaemin said again, almost dreamily, his voice annoyingly devoid of inflection. He seemed to be looking beyond Johnny, at a spot behind him. "I'm not --"

"Look at me when I'm asking you a question, dammit." Johnny finally snapped, grabbing hold of Jaemin's chin roughly.

*

That was when it happened. Johnny couldn't believe what he was seeing, what was happening as Jaemin bared his teeth in a frighteningly inhuman expression, his eyes stopping at blue and growing cloudy. A heartstoppingly pretty blue, the blue of the sky behind his head. But there was nothing behind, just flat emptiness, an utter lack of any emotion whatsoever. Johnny's heart chilled to a stop a second time in his chest, but now from icy fear, and he couldn't tear his eyes away from the horrific sight as Jaemin's mouth stretched open in a silent scream till Johnny could see his tonsils in the back of his throat, his jaw seeming unhinged as it just continued dropping.

His skin paled to a sickly, chalky alabaster, growing so translucent Johnny could suddenly see the blood vessels beneath his skin. They started protruding alarmingly, then popping out, first on his neck, then slowly spreading up to his face and hairline. Johnny could see the blood rushing through his veins, a shade of blue-red that wasn't normal. Jaemin's hands moved up to his throat, motions stiff and jerky like he was doing a robotic dance in some freakish choreography. Johnny was still frozen in place, rooted to the ground watching this like some bizarre nightmare unfolding or a freak accident he was witnessing. He couldn't process or make sense of what was happening.

Jaemin clutched at his throat with both hands, clawed at his skin. His nails drew blood and Johnny gasped, but Jaemin didn't seem to notice. His eyes tore at Johnny mutely, terrified and pleading, equally bewildered at what was happening.

"Jaemin-ah!" The anguished cry ripped from his throat, and Johnny reached out for Jaemin with both hands to grab his shoulders.

At the same time, two things happened.

One, Jaemin's eyes zoomed down to his hand and his teeth started chattering, clacking together loudly in a horrifying noise and hungry, guttural snarls started emerging from his throat. His eyes bulged out of his head and his neck stretched out from his shoulders -- but his body didn't move. Only his neck lengthened on its stem. Johnny screamed.

Two, a person leaped out from the side, seemingly materializing from nowhere right as Jaemin lunged for Johnny's neck, mouthfirst. He shoved Johnny out of the way, so hard that Johnny landed on his ass a few paces away, the gritty gravel scraping his knees and palms painfully.

Johnny gasped in shock and for air as he spun around to see if his savior had managed to escape unscathed himself. His chest plummeted again when he saw the boy, who he realised was his age, clutching at his hand, face turning ashen. He had managed to overpower and subdue Jaemin, knocking him out with a few punches to the side of the head and Johnny's boyfriend was sprawled lifelessly on the ground, his limbs twisted out at unnatural angles as if his bones had been deformed too. His body was still twitching in odd spasms and his paper-white skin was fractured with crimson blood vessels. His teeth were still clicking together compulsively and the noise was so horrible that Johnny wanted to put his hands over his ears. He had never heard or seen anything so ghastly in his life.

*

He was in such shock, he didn't even realise he had been crying for some time, wailing plaintively until he stumbled to his feet and staggered towards the boy on knees trembling like jelly.

His legs gave out in front of the two boys, torn between checking on his morphed boyfriend and the stranger, the kind Samaritan who had rescued him from being bitten.

"Are you okay?" He was almost hyperventilating too much to speak.

The boy looked far calmer than his hysterical state, despite having been bitten. He grimaced, examining the set of teeth marks on the side of his hand.

"I think so." His voice was gravelly, like sandpaper, but thankfully it still sounded lucid without the lack of intonation Jaemin's voice had displayed just before he turned into a... savage. "The bite is shallow. I managed to shake him off before he sunk his teeth in."

"B-but you're bleeding." Johnny pointed at the miniscule rubies welling up on the angry red teeth marks with a shaking finger.

World still spinning dizzyingly, he rummaged in his pocket for his handkerchief. He rarely had an occasion to use it and Jaemin always teased him for carrying one around because it was such an old-fashioned and uncool habit. Johnny felt a choked sob rising in his throat again at the thought of Jaemin whose prone form he was still trying not to look at because it made his insides dissolve to liquid every time he did.

"Here. Wrap it with this." He clumsily shoved the handkerchief in the boy's hand, and he accepted it gratefully, lifting one corner to hold between his teeth as he tried to bandage himself. His temples were damp with cold sweat, lips white and he seemed to be in pain.

"Let me help you," Johnny stammered, awkwardly placing his hands around the boy's and helping him to tie the handkerchief in a loose but secure knot around the cut to prevent infection. "Is that okay?" he asked tentatively in concern, and the boy nodded, with slight relief. He inhaled deeply.

*

"Hey," Johnny frowned, his heart still hammering. "You're from the same university as us, right? Statistics class, back row?"

The stranger looked up, eyes wide. He finally cracked a small, wan smile at Johnny's recognition, seeming to be relieved.

"You noticed me?"

Johnny nodded, lowering his own eyes at the boy's surprisingly eager gaze. "Of course. I've seen you around."

The boy's eyes grew warmer, a little colour seeming to return to his cheeks. He closed his eyes, tilting his face up and wrapping the fingers of his uninjured hand tightly over the wound, for a second. Then he took a deep breath and opened them, eyes still relievingly focused and pitch black.

"I'm Mark," he said, voice a touch less tense. "Mark Lee."

"Johnny." Johnny extended a hand, feeling ludicrous introducing himself under the circumstances, but Mark took it awkwardly with his good hand and they shook limply.

"I know," he replied, almost too soft to hear.

Johnny was about to ask how when he realised something. "How did you know he was going to bite me? Did you just happen to be passing by?"

Mark reddened for the first time, lowering his eyes from Johnny's piercing gaze. "Actually... I'd been following both of you from school."

"Following?" Johnny repeated uncomprehendingly.

Mark jerked his head down in a small nod. "I... live on the same floor as your boyfriend and his roommate in the school dormitory. And last night... I witnessed something -- disturbing."

Johnny gulped, stomach turning to ice. "Disturbing?" he rasped, voice barely a whisper. This couldn't be happening to him. To Jaemin. He swallowed a scream of terror.

Mark nodded again, looking sick himself. "You must have heard about the rumours spreading around the internet lately."

"An epidemic of a virus causing mutations in humans," Johnny tried not to laugh, voice shrill with incredulity. "Zombies." He could barely force the word past his suddenly bone-dry throat. "But those are just rumours. Made up by some crazies with nothing better to do. They aren't true. They can't be."

Mark just looked at him, eyes pained. "I thought so too until I witnessed Jeno attacking Jaemin last night," he said softly. "I'm sorry, hyung," he added quietly when Johnny didn't say anything, couldn't say anything.

*

Subconsciously, he had suspected this was what happened to Jaemin. After all, nothing else could explain his bizarre and shocking sudden change in behavior right out of the plot of horror movies. Maybe that was why he had been avoiding looking at his collapsed boyfriend so far since the attack, pretending like everything was normal, talking to Mark as if Jaemin hadn't just tried to rip out his throat with his bare teeth like a rabid bloodhound.

Now, he finally couldn't deceive himself anymore. He forced his eyes back down, swallowing the bile that threatened to rise at the sight of Jaemin who had almost stopped moving and now looked petrified, the veins a bruised discolour against his skin which looked waxy and marbled.

"So if your suspicions are true... w-what should we do with him?" Johnny whimpered, feeling on the verge of breakdown. He couldn't bear to touch Jaemin, honestly still scared shitless he would spring to his feet again and pounce on both of them, murdering them in cold blood. But he let his bare calf in his knee-length denim cutoffs graze Jaemin's lifeless arm lightly, and shivered at the bone-chilling arctic temperature. Jaemin couldn't still be alive -- except he was and that was the most telling evidence that the love of Johnny's life might have become one of the undead.

Johnny had no idea what to do -- whether to drop to his knees and grieve with bereavement or to run away as fast as he could from the ticking time bomb that was Jaemin, screaming his lungs out hysterically. He had always called Jaemin his baby monster but now he had literally turned into a man-eating monster. This wasn't just a nightmare. It was a cruel joke the heavens were playing on them. Johnny pinched his arm hard, closed his eyes and wished to wake up somewhere else. When he opened them, Mark was looking sympathetically at him, jaw clenched with helplessness too and good hand wrapped around his hurt arm.

"We should call the ambulance; the police," Johnny babbled, on the verge of passing out. His hands were slippery and shaky as he dug out his phone and dialled 911.

Mark's hand on his stopped him before he pressed the call button.

"Hyung... I don't think we should." He was shaking his head frantically, worrying his lip. "What if... they do something to him? Or tranquilize him... because they think he's dangerous?"

Johnny's phone slipped out of his hand onto the ground at the words, the very thought of losing Jaemin. Even though it was obvious Jaemin was no longer human, he was still Johnny's beloved and Johnny couldn't imagine losing him.

"You're right," he whispered, clutching Mark's hand in relief. "But we have to do something. We have to help him."

"We should get to safety first," Mark said softly, looking regretfully down at Jaemin. "He might wake up any time, and then we would both get infected too."

"We can't just leave him lying here!" Johnny almost shrieked.

Mark flinched, and he quickly dialed his tone down, mollified. "I'm sorry. I'm just -- in shock, I think." He struggled to breathe, running a frustrated hand through his hair.

"It's all right. I understand." Mark's voice was carefully calm. "How about this -- we'll call 911 and describe his symptoms. They should have doctors at the hospital who would know best how to handle him -- they must have seen cases like this before. And then... promise me you'll go back home immediately and lock your door. Watch the news and don't come out until we get an all-clear. We don't know if this is happening to other people too." They both looked around as if expecting a horde of zombies to swarm out from the trees in their lurching hobble.

Johnny was taken aback by the urgency in Mark's voice. Even in his beleaguered state, he was touched by the concern of someone who was only his classmate, not even a friend.

"I..." He hesitated, undecided, but Mark was already pulling out his own phone, dialing the three digits swiftly. Johnny noticed that he was visibly sweating more, looking pallid and unwell. He wondered if Mark was feeling faint too and abruptly felt bad for continuing to put him in danger with his deliberation and selfishness.

"You should leave first." He grabbed Mark's injured arm impulsively, and the younger boy looked up sharply, eyes round. Johnny quickly dropped his hand in embarrassment but held his eyes as he said firmly, "I'll make the call and leave after that. You go home first. You're hurt."

Mark put his hand over the speaker and shook his head. His eyes were defiant and immovable. "No. We stay or go together," he said in his low voice, and then motioned with a finger over his lips for Johnny to be quiet as he was distracted by the operator answering.

*

They left Jaemin still lying there with his mouth and eyes wide open, looking like a dead fish's and Johnny's heart felt like it was splitting in half. He concentrated on Mark's safety, his condition as they staggered away from the scene on wobbly legs, leaning towards each other for support.

A few blocks away from his dormitory which Johnny had insisted on escorting him to, Mark changed.

Johnny first noticed something amiss from the way Mark started lagging behind him, looking uncomfortable and fidgeting, drawing in deep but sporadic breaths.

His bangs fell over his eyes, obscuring them in shadow when he lowered his face, so Johnny couldn't see the colour of his eyes but he had an ominous premonition of unease as he turned on his heel apprehensively and started approaching the boy slowly so as not to startle him.

"Mark?" he whispered when he was in front of him. His heart dropped to his knees when Mark looked up through his eyelashes and Johnny saw through the curtain of his fringe with a cold clench of fright that one of his dark, almond-shaped eyes had shifted to an unmistakable ice blue. An electric blue which lightened in seconds to a shade of powder blue that looked so harmless, so deceptively sweet that Johnny couldn't quite believe that it meant Mark was dangerous; bloodthirsty.

"Johnny." Mark's voice was an octave lower than before, almost a growl from deep inside his chest. His hands clenched into white-knuckled fists, flew up to curl around his neck, clawing helplessly like Jaemin had as Johnny watched with powerless panic. "Get -- away," Mark breathed with difficulty, before his throat closed up and his canines flashed like fangs from between his lips. His eyeballs rolled around his eyes like marbles, zooming in like ravenous lasers on Johnny's jugular.

Johnny was running before he even knew he was, on instinct. He could still hear the sound of Mark's teeth clattering together, enamel clacking from metres away, the sound chasing him relentlessly. He was sobbing again in sheer horror, shaking his head furiously in denial and yelling incoherent curses and expletives in frustration and anger and raw naked fear. "Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!"

He stopped when his lungs gave out, falling to his hands and knees on the road when he didn't hear the shuffling sound of footsteps following in the jerky zombie-walk. He turned around fearfully, heart pounding in his throat to see Mark standing in the exact same place, frozen like an ice statue. He was so still Johnny almost thought with a jolt that he was dead.

He advanced, chest hammering in his ears. What could he do? He couldn't just walk away as if nothing had happened. When he was closer he could see that Mark's eyes had glazed over and he had that petrified, terrified look in his emptying gaze as if he was getting shut into his own body, paralyzed by his own reflexes which had taken control over him. His teeth never once stopped clacking.

Mark's eyes screamed to Johnny to stop more eloquently than if he had shouted the words out verbally when Johnny was a few feet away. Johnny wisely obeyed and backed off a little. Everything inside him was telling him to run but he stood stock still.

"Are you okay?" His voice was shaking, hoarse and raw. He wanted to reach for Mark but kept his hands clenched at his sides.

Mark didn't move, not even his eyes. They had lost all their light, looking like shuttered windows without even a gleam of life despite the pretty blue glaze of the right like freshly lacquered pottery. The only way Johnny could tell that Mark still recognized who he was was the merest glimmer of recognition he thought he detected in his still-black eye and the word he mouthed silently at Johnny, looking agonized from the effort of holding himself back from succumbing to his animal urges, his legs twitching and muscles taut, coiled to spring.

 _Go_.

"No," Johnny sobbed ridiculously in reply as if Mark had spoken it out. "I can't leave you here. It was all my fault you -- I'm sorry, Mark-yah."

Miraculously, Johnny's first time calling Mark's name, with bittersweet anguish, seemed to wake him up a little, rouse him from inside the zombie that had taken over him. Johnny watched with wide eyes as his limbs jerked into motion with a monumental effort, joints swinging unnaturally and stiffly like a wooden puppet.

Mark's voice was rusty when he spoke again, like he had forgotten how to use it. But the syllables of his Korean were unmistakable, sounding beautifully like a blessing to Johnny's disbelieving ears. He leaned forward to hear Mark's voice, softer than a breath.

"Then take me home."

He didn't have the strength to say any more, or even continue standing upright after this exertion, toppling bonelessly into Johnny's frantic arms.

*

Johnny's mind raced desperately all the way as he half-carried, half-dragged Mark, who had fallen into a dazed stupor, back to his home because he didn't know if Mark lived alone and where his keys were besides. He was afraid to touch Mark or rummage in his bag in case it provoked him into aggression. Mark's fists never uncurled the whole trip through the dark and deserted alleys and backstreets because Johnny was afraid someone would see them and scream or call the cops, and when he dumped Mark as gently as he could on his bed Johnny forcibly unfurled his fists because he was afraid Mark would hurt himself. His nails though blunt had left angry crescents in the pale delicate skin of his palm and drawn blood.

Johnny left him lying on his bed, sprawled out stiffly as if he had broken his limbs, his eyes wide open and unblinking, unseeing. He locked the door, grimly taking the chance that Mark wouldn't have enough strength to break it down, or at least it would take him awhile. Although he had already witnessed the inhuman strength the transformation gave regular humans from Jaemin's attack on him, even back then he had already realised that Mark's case was significantly milder, his mutation seeming a lot less drastic compared to Jaemin's. He gathered it was because the wound had been superficial and maybe the amount of virus that had entered Mark's bloodstream had been less -- hell, he had no fucking clue.

Everything was guesswork, a life-threatening risk, including the whole pig carcass Johnny dragged home in a bloody plastic sack whose smell made him want to retch. It was so heavy he was panting by the time he sneaked guiltily back into his apartment, swiveling shifty eyes from side to side like he had slaughtered the poor animal himself. The heavyset, muscular man with a sleeve of tattoos wielding the chopper at the butcher shop had bugged his eyes out suspiciously in creepy resemblance to Jaemin and Mark when Johnny asked timidly if he could possibly purchase an entire pig instead of just parts like intestines and the stomach and the giant slabs of meat hanging from hooks.

He had paid almost the entire contents of his wallet for it and felt for a brief instant that he might be going crazy as he dragged the dead pig back home with not a single inkling whether it would be of use or not or totally unappetizing to Mark when he woke up. If he even did.

All Johnny knew was that he couldn't just abandon a second victim by the roadside, especially one he was responsible for.

He had already abandoned his boyfriend, ran away like a coward with his tail between his legs. What kind of man would do that? Jaemin would've stayed, had Johnny been the one who tried to bite him. He would've taken Johnny home.

*

He felt sick to the stomach at the thought, praying fervently that the paramedics had long found Jaemin by now and brought him safely back to the hospital and given him an injection of medicine that would turn him right back to normal. Yes, Johnny told himself unconvincingly, the next morning Jaemin would burst into his apartment right as rain and laughing himself silly at how he had turned into a fucking zombie for fuck's sake and they would both laugh till their stomachs hurt about how he had tried to devour Johnny -- not Johnny's dick but Johnny himself -- alive.

Okay, so maybe he was a bit hysterical at this point. But he had just seen two people -- one of them his lover -- turn into walking corpses in one day and was now dragging a dead pig sloshing in a bag of blood back to his house to feed one of them or end up getting bitten himself. He figured he had the right to go a little crazy.

*

He nearly passed out in relief when the frightening, manic glint returned to Mark's eyes the moment he got a whiff of the raw meat. His senses seemed to be sharpened and intensified by a few times, managing to detect the scent when Johnny was barely past the front door.

He heaved the bag into the room and was immediately thrown against his room door, his back hitting it with a thud from the force with which Mark lunged at him, tackling the bag out of his hands onto the floor where it fell open and out spilled a mess of blood and flying guts from where Mark had started ripping with gusto into the pig's body with his surprisingly sharp teeth like he hadn't eaten in years. Bits of blood splashed onto Johnny's face and clothes and he dry gagged. He turned away, unable to look as Mark gobbled every body part of the animal up like a starving feral animal, making a mess of Johnny's floor and his own face and clothes but looking like he didn't give a shit as he slurped up the innards like spaghetti.

*

After Mark had finished every single part of the pig, even crunching the bones between his steel-like teeth, he licked Johnny's linoleum floor clean of every speck of blood with his wet pink tongue. Johnny watched through his fingers, gut churning. His heart was beating shallowly in his chest as he tried to look invisible standing in a corner of his room and making himself as small as he could, but Mark didn't seem to notice him with his clouded over eyes which moved over Johnny like a part of the furniture before he flopped over on his stomach on Johnny's bed and proceeded to start snoring softly in a few minutes.

The food seemed to have managed to assuage his hunger as a newborn undead, and a full stomach had made him drowsy. Johnny felt an unexpected pang of tenderness as he realised Mark must be exhausted by the changes his body and system had gone through in such a short span of time, collapsing and rebuilding itself to contain forces a normal human anatomy was never designed to. He crept closer carefully after ten minutes and gingerly turned the sleeping boy over, surprisingly heavy for someone so slight-framed. He was buff but slim -- almost skinny as a teenager. His cheeks were still chubby but his face was angular as a model's. Johnny hadn't had the time to notice before but he was incredibly good-looking.

His face was a mess of blood and still bloodless with the whole zombie effect but even this wasn't enough to disguise his long, almost pretty eyelashes fanned over high cheekbones and delicately sharp, straight nose, cherry lips parted artlessly over pearly white teeth. His skin was the most sinfully creamy shade Johnny had ever seen, unblemished. Johnny swallowed, feeling absurdly guilty for noticing. He had a boyfriend -- even though said boyfriend was now not known to be human or not. Still, he wondered idly how he had never noticed Mark's striking looks from the back row of the lecture theatre because there was no way someone as gorgeous as this could ever be a wallflower if they tried.

*

He forced himself to tear his admiring eyes away after an inordinately long time spent in a daze he justified to himself was because he was so drained and worn out from the events of the day, the exhaustion hitting him like a truck the moment Mark had settled and he could stop being fearing for his life, at least for the time being.

He stumbled off his bed and staggered towards the bathroom where he wet a washcloth with hot water. He was relieved to see Mark still lying in the same position when he returned and started dabbing at the bloodstains on his face and neck, rubbing him clean with more boldness when he didn't wake. He eventually managed to scrub most of them off but didn't feel brave enough to change Mark's shirt caked with dried blood.

*

Johnny jerked awake the next morning, disoriented and discombobulated to the horrible faint teeth clacking sound like fingernails on chalkboard. He squeezed his eyes shut, willing himself to believe the whole of the previous day was a nightmare but when he opened them, the evidence that it wasn't was right in front of him. He had gathered that the undead were unable to feel or express emotions but the anguish and torment and remorse that glimmered in Mark's eyes despite their glassy remote look and dryness, his hands tight in fistfuls of Johnny's sheets as the veins in his neck strained almost prettily from lunging forward to pin Johnny down, made his heart skip a beat.

"Mark, you -- ?" Johnny didn't know how to phrase his question, but it didn't matter anyway since Mark just gazed balefully at him, seeming to have lost his power of speech too. Johnny's heart sank in bitter disappointment.

But --

"Do you want to... eat?" Johnny ventured delicately, asking the obvious, and held his breath. His entire room smelled like pig's blood and the stench made his empty stomach turn over. He felt weak and only then realised he hadn't eaten for almost a day too.

Mark didn't nod or respond in any way that indicated he had heard Johnny's question. But his eyes darkened and the clacking grew louder and more insistent.

Johnny heaved a heavy sigh of despair and swung his legs off the bed. He turned to Mark, struggling to keep his composure and not burst out shrieking like a madman.

"Wait here," he said calmly, in his most soothing tone.

He tried not to run from pure fear as he turned away slowly and with measured paces walked to the door and opened it to leave. Mark remained sitting in the center of his bed and his beady eyes watched him go.

Johnny managed to slake Mark's insatiable appetite with an offering of raw meat again, but he knew he couldn't maintain this for long. Besides Mark's large consumption, his apartment was starting to reek of the stench of uncooked meat and blood and the sharp metallic scent was becoming overpowering. And realistically speaking it wasn't possible for him to keep purchasing large quantities of meat and animal body parts too, even if he went to different shops. People would get suspicious and if they called in the police and he got arrested who knew what would happen to the susceptible -- Johnny chortled to himself at the irony of this word -- young zombie he was harbouring most likely illegally in his house.

He realised he would have to think of other kinds of food Mark might not mind consuming, experiment a little. Just like any other house pet, he would have to train Mark's tastes gradually till he didn't have to run around the market every day bankrupting his bank account on whole tragically slaughtered animals. Thankfully Mark didn't seem like a very picky eater and his bloodlust wasn't only strictly limited to humans, maybe because the virus seemed to be contained and not spreading as rapidly in his cells.

He didn't feel comfortable referring to Mark as a pet -- but Johnny _was_ rearing him, feeding and clothing him; and what else was he then? His roommate? Despite everything Johnny and Jaemin hadn't broken up yet and Johnny knew his boyfriend well enough to know that he wouldn't like Johnny acquiring a male roommate, especially when Johnny's favourite pet peeve was Jaemin's own male roommate back in the dormitory. He would accuse Johnny of hypocrisy. Besides, could a zombie even qualify as a roommate?

Anyway, when he thought of the word pet he did so more affectionately than derogatorily, like, _my pet Mark_. Mark who didn't even differentiate Johnny from a chair or piece of furniture -- Johnny must be crazy to let himself get attached to him.

In the span of less than a day, Johnny had already managed to accept that Mark was probably here to stay, at least until he recovered. Johnny had the responsibility to take care of him until they found out what was happening and managed to cure him and get him back to normal. Till then, he wasn't going to let Mark wander around and get hurt or attacked again alone.

*

Forcing himself not to let his mind wander beyond the present, to the horrifying maybes and what ifs and wild possibilities, Johnny doggedly and numbly nursed Mark back to a semblance of humanity. He unraveled his bloodied handkerchief and bandaged Mark's now-inflamed wound after applying antiseptic. Mark didn't seem to feel the pain or notice his carefulness, only staring straight ahead into space the way Jaemin had before changing.

This was what Johnny would find him doing for the subsequent days -- simply staring at the wall for hours at a time, seeming to have zoned out. His eyes were glasslike and registered nothing, even when Johnny waved a hand in front of him.

But he knew Mark knew he was there -- in fact, was hyperaware of his presence and proximity -- when it approached his feeding times and Johnny got too close. He quickly realised that his nearness was torture for Mark, when his nostrils would flare and he would start sniffing the air like a dog, falling apart within seconds into a snarling, teeth-snapping predator. In the end, for his own safety and because it scared him out of his wits whenever Mark lost control like that, Johnny had to buy a pair of steel-reinforced handcuffs and cuff him to the bedframe.

It tore him apart to cuff Mark like an untamed savage, even though he knew it was a logical safety precaution and Mark was no one to him, not a friend, just a dangerous non-human. He hated to take away Mark's dignity like that, even though he didn't seem to know or care what was happening. But Johnny knew he had to study his reactions and behavior first before he could make a plan for the good of both of them to live together harmoniously. Was it even possible -- a zombie and a human living under the same roof?

Johnny knew he was playing with fire, that he was out of his depth. But he couldn't just give up on Mark like that.

*

He quickly learnt the distance to keep so his scent wouldn't torment Mark, tempt him and cloud his senses. He bought some foul-smelling artificial scents to spray on his body, like insect repellent or air freshener. Not cologne, because cologne seemed to smell edible to Mark. And the natural musk of Johnny's odour was like a buffet.

To play it safe and since he had to approach at his mealtimes, Johnny bought a muzzle, one that wasn't too tight or painful, for Mark to wear over his mouth as an added precaution. But as the time passed and he got used to Mark's spikes and lows in appetites, he seldom used both the cuffs and the muzzle, getting lazy and lax about his own safety. Mark just seemed so harmless, like he would never touch a hair on Johnny's head even if he were starving, that Johnny trusted him irrationally.

Mark never talked, not once, after his right eye turned blue. He didn't look sad or happy, just expressionless as he stared into the horizon, his silence almost serene.

What was he thinking? Johnny found himself wondering, more than a few times. Was he even thinking at all?

It was hard to figure out if Mark was still functioning like a normal human being, when all he expressed interest in was feeding. He would attack his food, go down on it with a vehemence, tearing into flesh like it was still alive and he wanted to rip it to shreds. Johnny shuddered, knowing that in his addled mind Mark saw these pieces of meat as living people.

*

But still, there was something different about him from the grainy pictures and videos Johnny pored over late into the night in the dark outside his bedroom as inside Mark slept like a log. He had only brief experience interacting with one zombie so far but it had been sufficient to notice now that Mark didn't act the way Jaemin did. Similar, but not the same.

It was his eyes, Johnny realised. There was no intent to kill in them.

It was ridiculous to describe Mark's eyes as placid or calm -- and yet, in comparison to Jaemin's crazed ones, they were. Mark's eyes were gazing inward, not filled with murderous and uncontrollable cold rage.

But still, he had that look in his eyes Johnny knew by now defined the living undead -- that uncanny look he couldn't tear his own eyes away from, because there was so much pain in both Jaemin's and Mark's eyes that they haunted him. Their depths seemed implumbable, agony so silent and unbearable that looking in their eyes felt like drowning.

Most of the time after the first day, though, Mark's eyes were shuttered like two closed windows, which wasn't much better but at least they didn't suck Johnny's soul.

*

He took the necessary measures to buy Mark time for his recovery, so no one would come investigating and poking their noses in when he didn't turn up for classes or mark attendance for some time. He knew Mark would have wanted that instinctively, to be given a chance to recover and go back to school without anyone else knowing what had happened to him even though Johnny had only met him for technically less than one day, even one hour.

Mark had told him he was living in the dormitory, and he was a foreign student, so Johnny concluded he wouldn't have family in Korea. So he took things into his own hands and went to the school administrative office to take a leave of absence for him.

Filling in the form with the aid of Mark's student identity card, he nearly broke down at how young Mark looked in the photo, achingly innocent. He was smiling brightly as if he couldn't contain his excitement to travel to Korea to further his studies. Johnny was sure he never expected it to end this way in his wildest dreams.

He had already found out on the second day after going through Mark's bag and wallet that he was actually three years younger than Johnny, not as mature as he looked initially. Although Johnny had assumed they were about the same age since they had a class together, he turned out to be a freshman only months into his first year, practically a baby.

He was just a kid. Not even twenty yet. Johnny felt his guilt intensify at the realisation that he had implicated Mark, dragged him into this and now he was safe and sound and still whole while Mark was suffering because of him.

Mark's canvas sling bag looked ragged, threads frayed at the hem and some holes poking through. It made Johnny's heart go out to him, made him realise with more clarity than ever that Mark had once been a very human being. He still was, very much so and it was his incredible self-restraint, his compassion that demonstrated this more than anything. He was human because he wouldn't hurt Johnny, wouldn't hurt anybody. Johnny didn't even think Mark could hurt an ant.

*

He knew, had known from the start, that Mark could crush him if he wanted, in less than a heartbeat. Nothing would be easier. He was stronger and quicker and more powerful than Johnny, who was just a puny human with his slow reflexes.

The only reason Johnny was still alive was because of Mark's mercy. He would never let himself forget that.

He dropped by the student dormitory to get some of Mark's necessities, although it was a pointless gesture since Mark didn't do any of his usual activities nowadays besides eating and spacing out.

Mark's room was spare, almost bare. It felt unbearably cold and lonely. Johnny had gone through his phone and although his inbox was full of messages, they were mostly from the same few friends and he had few contacts, mostly what Johnny assumed were his family's numbers behind English names.

It made his heart ache hollowly. How lonely must Mark have been, trying to make a life for himself away from home, in a faraway country not knowing a soul?

He wished he could have reached out to Mark earlier, gotten to know him and become one of his friends; become his hyung and take care of him in Seoul. He couldn't help wondering wistfully what Mark was like before, when he was still wholly human.

He had seen him around in school, walking past him sitting in the student cafeteria or seen him from the corner of his eye without really registering in the lecture theatre during their shared class. He regrets not paying more attention now. Johnny remembered most frequently seeing him with another boy called Donghyuck he knew by face but had never talked to before either. He recalled with difficulty images he hadn't known he had stored in his memory, from his peripheral vision as he worked on his essays before class, hearing Mark's distinctive voice rising and falling in animated conversation and his high-pitched, gleeful laughter. The grace that he always possessed in his lithe body is still very much present even with how the virus has ravaged it.

He had an amazing smile, angelic and yet devilish at the same time. Johnny feels the greatest loss so far when he realises with a start that he hasn't seen it once, in all the time Mark has been living in his apartment.

*

On his way out he subtly asked around about the latest gossip, chatting up some other students living in the dorm who were around in the rec room and the girl at the front desk who he told that Mark had gone back to Canada for a personal family emergency indefinitely. She wrote it down in her record book and he felt a little more relieved. His shoulders sagged with a held breath when he heard nothing amiss about Mark circulating in their dormitory and freshman gossip.

He lingered, scuffing his feet on the ground in both fear and curiosity when he bypassed the closed door with the names Jeno and Jaemin on dog tags hanging from a hook on the door, and two plushies. It was ominously closed and he asked a passing student who didn't know he was Jaemin's boyfriend casually if they were in.

The student stared at him, confused. "Didn't you hear? They vacated the room awhile back. No one knows where they went, but most people think they eloped together." He snickered, not knowing the devastating impact his words had on Johnny.

Although he knew it was most likely an untrue and false fabrication, it still stung to hear his boyfriend's name and the word elope in the same sentence with another man. Especially since his roommate Lee Jeno had been the cause of many quarrels between them long before this happened.

Jaemin had always insisted they were just platonic friends despite Johnny's green-eyed accusations that they were far too close to be bros. Jaemin had told him, in less polite terms, that he was an overly conservative stick in the mud and more closed-minded than an old man. He had also claimed righteously it was "perfectly normal" for friends of the same gender to share not only a room but also a bed and food and clothes. Johnny had asked him if it was normal to share their bodies and lips too and Jaemin hadn't spoken to him for a week till he apologized and begged to be taken back.

*

Now, he didn't know what to think about what Mark had told him about his love rival also joining the ranks of the undead. He didn't know whether Jaemin and Jeno were together now, and he didn't want to know. Thinking of Jaemin made the pain lance through him again, breathtakingly fresh like an unhealed wound. He had managed to forget about Jaemin temporarily, or at least distract himself from thinking about him and worrying, by the multitude of chores and tasks that came with taking care of Mark.

But at night was when his thoughts ran wild, to all the horrendous possibilities. Jaemin dead or hurt -- maybe worse. Maybe alone. Helpless and wounded and looking for Johnny, waiting for him to find him and save him. It took all of his strength not to leap out of his bed and sprint madly into the darkness of the night, yelling Jaemin's name desperately and searching high and low over the country for him.

He couldn't just think of himself selfishly. He had Mark to consider now too. Mark who relied on him and depended solely on him. Johnny had to stay strong for him and not fall too.

In the next few days, weeks and months when Johnny went back to school warily, leaving Mark locked up in his room at home with Johnny's number saved under speed dial on his phone although he had probably forgotten how to use it, Johnny heard about a few cases of students disappearing on campus. His heart skipped a beat in hope and fear.

But that was all. The cases quickly faded behind other more fresh gossip, seeming to be hushed up and covered up by someone higher up. It was the same way with the newspapers which he religiously combed every article for news about this or any helpful information. They only vaguely referenced disappearances and never published any more news about the missing people. Johnny could only imagine the worst.

Jaemin's parents were beside themselves too when they called him and all Johnny could do was to lie and hide the little he knew because he knew it was too wild a tale for many people to believe and anyway, it was true he didn't know where Jaemin was now. The less said about the incident, the better for Jaemin too. He needed to find out the truth about what happening and exactly what was the reason Jaemin and Mark had morphed into zombies. There was something shady about all of this, the way no one dared to talk about it and he had to get to the bottom of the matter to find out where Jaemin was currently, if he was still in the world, and help him as well as Mark.

Most people seemed to be blissfully unaffected by the small-scale outbreak, the panic and frenzy mostly concentrated online on forums which a lot of people didn't have access to and dismissed even by those who did as crazy talk.

Johnny didn't blame them. He would have been one of these skeptics too, if it hadn't befallen him personally. This was a thing that was hard to believe unless you witnessed it with your own eyes, and even then held the surreal quality of a dream.

If he had the choice to close his eyes to this, to choose not to believe in such monstrous horrors, he would do so wholeheartedly too. But it was probably too late to wish for that when he was currently entrenched right in the middle.

He wondered why he was one of the unlucky ones, why a tragedy that seemed so rare and not widespread had chosen him and his loved ones as its victim.

There was no answer except that dreadful silence in which he and Mark dwelled nowadays in their cold, hollow house.

*

Johnny bought a heavy baseball bat, sharpened the knives in his kitchen. He didn't know what he was preparing for except that every day Mark seemed more defenseless to him, more in need of protection. He channeled his frustration into push ups and sit ups and pull ups, building up his body so he could try and be even half as strong as one of their kind if he ever had to confront them.

With the passage of time, they had achieved a measure of peace he never imagined possible. Mark slept a lot, much more than a regular human, seeming to be drained from the disease wrecking its path through his body and systematically infiltrating his organs as well as his "vegetarian" diet of cat food given variety maybe once a week by his favourite bloody rare steaks, when Johnny could afford it. He knew that it was a daily battle for Mark to keep his basest urges under control and he could see the effort it took him to stay domesticized, hold himself back from just wrecking Johnny's house, snapping his neck and then running amok in a rampage across the city biting everyone in sight.

He was holding a potential outbreak that could wipe out the entire population in his apartment, unguarded by anyone except him, but Johnny didn't know why he really couldn't care less anymore.

He wouldn't put Mark away for all those people, sacrifice him for the greater good. Johnny wasn't selfless and he wasn't a saint. He was going to hoard Mark here no matter how big a danger he posed to the rest of the world and no one could stop him. If anyone wanted to touch a single hair on Mark's head they would have to go through him first. Mark had already suffered enough innocently. No one was going to hold him captive and shackled up except Johnny.

*

A year passed like this. Johnny grew older and graduated from university with his useless degree in liberal arts. He got a freelance job as an editor, mind-numbing work but which allowed him to work from home and keep an eye on Mark at all times.

Mark had moved into his room and slept in his bed now as if it was his own. Johnny slept in the guest room on the pull-out couch. On the very first night, he had fallen asleep on his own bed next to Mark because he was simply too wiped out but after that he had been careful not to take that risk again, just in case Mark woke up delirious and half-awake thinking Johnny was food and sinking his teeth in.

He shaved every morning when he woke up and waited for Mark to grow facial hair so he could help him shave it too, but Mark never did. His skin was as smooth and hairless as a baby's, his hair still the same length and chestnut shade it had been a year ago when Johnny had met him. Even the dark roots hadn't grown out and it was the greatest evidence that Mark had just stopped -- stopped living, paused in time when he had been bitten. When Johnny placed his ear against his chest tentatively he heard the faintest heartbeat, pumping so slowly and dully it sounded like it was moments away from giving up the ghost too.

His body looked almost normal, incredibly and unaccountably so. It didn't have the network of protruding blue veins like roads on a map running all over his skin, unlike other zombies Johnny had seen pictures of online. He looked almost indistinguishable from a human being.

After some time, he got gutsy enough to dress and undress Mark because even though he wasn't emitting bodily fluids or peeing or relieving himself the dried blood and grime on his clothes was starting to reek.

Johnny found himself taking the time to undress Mark and clothe him in clean garments of his own, slightly too big for the smaller boy. He had barely grown into his height and body at nineteen and all Johnny wanted was to see him enter adulthood, see how much more beautiful he had the potential to be.

It was so unfair that Mark's life was just halted, there like a stopped watch. He had been filled with so much life and passion, like Jaemin. So much more than Johnny.

*

Sometimes Johnny would find himself admiring, aesthetically and clinically, the smooth muscled planes of Mark's body, the baby abs and defined pecs, his delicately wrought collarbones. He would be a fool not to savour this opportunity when Mark didn't seem to be aware of his curious gaze, and if aware then not the least self-conscious. Mark looked and felt so fragile in his arms, unprotesting and pliant. Johnny felt like he was taking care of his baby brother, although Mark was almost as buff as him and now twice as strong even at his weakest.

He spent more time than he spent on his work scouring the internet tirelessly for videos and forums and articles and news from all around the world about this phenomenon, this anomaly in humans that had afflicted Mark and Jaemin. He searched for a cure daily, never giving up hope that one would appear with the dawn of every new day. There was so much bullshit to get through to get to anything worth reading but he did it willingly, till his eyes swam and got bloodshot and prickly and he had to put on his thick oversized reading glasses and squint through them.

Soon, he knew more than he ever needed to about zombies and their habits and behavior and history. He knew so much he could have gotten a PhD on it if it were a subject, that he was a walking archive of useless information about these mystical creatures that most people still didn't believe existed and never would.

But none of it mattered, because Mark was still a zombie and there was no cure in sight.

*

He discovered Mark's amenity to cat food purely by accident and a stroke of luck. He had purchased the can of cat food by accident because he was in a hurry to rush back from the supermarket, and only realised it wasn't tuna when he got home. He wanted to return it since he didn't exactly have the cash to spare but the foil seal was already half-opened.

He was groaning in despair when he heard Mark's audible sniffing, the excited breaths of air he took deeply with his sensitive nose whenever he smelled something that whetted his appetite.

Johnny's heart leaped into his throat. Slowly, he advanced towards Mark, who he had trained so well to take off and put on his muzzle at the right times that he did so like clockwork every day without even noticing.

Mark was so excited to wolf down the can of cat food, he knocked it over and continued scarfing it up with hungry noises when it spilled to the floor.

Johnny watched in open-mouthed wonder, then wavered when Mark raised his eyes up to meet his, flckering with the first hint of lucidity and consciousness Johnny had seen since the beginning.

He blinked dazedly, unsure if this was a very vivid dream as Mark's eyes melted and turned entreating.

But no, it was real -- Mark was panting like an overexcited puppy and his eyes were limpid and liquid like a puppy's too. He looked like he would be sitting with his paws up and wagging his tail if he had them.

Crestfallenly, Mark batted at the empty can with one of his hands, peering into it hopefully and then satisfying himself with licking it clean of all traces.

It was all it took to break Johnny. The next day, he came home with two large grocery bags loaded with all the cat food the supermarket stocked and he could carry, having spent his entire paycheck for that month on it. As for his own needs, well -- he would just have to manage.

Mark didn't smile or cheer or thank Johnny. He couldn't. But the almost-warmth that livened his eyes for the first time as Johnny dumped ten cans at once into a huge platter, made them bear just the slightest more resemblance to that caring and gentle boy he had met, told Johnny that his impulsive purchase was right.

*

When the postman or delivery guy came around when Johnny ordered pizza or received his assignments couriered by messenger from the office, he made Mark wear an eyepatch just in case he wandered out of his room as he sometimes did naughtily even when Johnny strictly instructed him to stay.

Mark looked like a pirate with it -- a very adorable one. Johnny liked styling Mark's hair, experimenting with slicking his bangs up or down as Mark sat there like a mannequin staring into nothing and allowed Johnny to do whatever he wished with him, almost as much as he liked dressing Mark in his clothes and reveling in how they swallowed his smaller frame and more narrow shoulders. Mark looked so good in everything; he was like a walking photoshoot. It was such a waste that Johnny was the only one who got to see him and he sometimes secretly snapped pictures when Mark wasn't looking just so that he could fill the growing album in his phone which always made him smile when he scrolled through it although all the pictures were of the young zombie wearing the same blank empty expression.

It was only when a colleague asked why he had never met him before when they bumped into each other at the office, and confessed he had thought Johnny was a hermit or some really old creepy antisocial guy, pleasantly surprised to find him so young and handsome, that Johnny realised how solitary his existence had become.

But he realised with a start that he had never felt lonely, and that it was almost entirely due to his new roommate. Mark was as quiet as a piece of furniture and probably not as harmless but Johnny felt so much warmth and companionship emanating from his tranquil presence that he had never experienced the loneliness that naturally accompanied solitude.

No matter how placid and at ease Mark appeared, Johnny was constantly aware of how it was going against his very nature to abstain from biting Johnny once and for all. It had been more than a year of abstinence and every single additional day of life that Johnny got spoke volumes about Mark's strength of will, his self-discipline and commitment to abstinence and his determination to spare Johnny's life when he had no reason to.

Johnny was no one to him. He didn't even know if Mark recognized him in that flat, vacuous gaze at all. He didn't dare to hope.

*

One seemingly uneventful afternoon, something happened that proved him wrong and turned his whole world upside down.

He had returned home from a visit to his parents' house, eager to see Mark and make him do that eye-smile which was the closest to a smile Johnny had ever managed to get from him with the cat food topped by a fresh beefsteak in his bag, good quality beef his parents had wanted to cook for him but he asked to take home and keep in his refrigerator to eat slowly. Of course, he had intended to give Mark every bit of it because watching him eat it was far more enjoyable and fulfilling than any cuts of the best meat.

His heart dropped to his feet when he stopped cold outside his front door to see it ajar, when he had locked it carefully when he left. The bag of meat slipped out of his hands as he burst into the house, frantic, skidding across the sitting room to barge into his own bedroom, heart pounding with fear of what he would do if Mark wasn't sitting in his usual position on Johnny's bed.

Mark wasn't there, only his indentation in the sheets.

"Fuck!"

Johnny's hands were in his hair and his head was spinning wildly, world tilting precariously on its axis. He pawed at the bedsheets as if Mark could be hiding somewhere under, checked under the bed. He was going crazy. "Fuckfuckfuck," he just kept repeating in the bleak dark room as he helplessly spun around trying to comb all the corners with his eyes. His apartment was so small there were no places to hide and if Mark wasn't in his house, there was no telling where else he could be. Or who might have taken him.

At this thought, Johnny saw such a flash of white he kicked the foot of his bed so hard a piercing pain daggered through his foot and he folded to the ground, yelling and cursing more in pain as he clutched it.

Wait... why was his room dark? He always left the lights on except when Mark was sleeping and Mark didn't have the mental facility to turn them off by himself, or at least he didn't show the inclination to.

He had deduced from theories online by self-proclaimed experts as well as victims, aided by his own observations over the year that most, if not all, zombies were practically brain dead. They didn't have the power to think over things or process thought or speech like a normal person, or if they still had it it was locked away somewhere behind the mindless flesh-eating creature.

But in an instant, Johnny realised as he heard a chillingly familiar teeth-clacking sound from the direction of his closet, the sound Mark had stopped making more than six months ago after he adapted to his new diet and started wearing the muzzle, that he might have been completely wrong. All of them might have been.

But he had no time to process the implications then, and the subsequent revelation about Mark demonstrated by his behavior which further cast aspersions on this theory, when in a blur from behind him Mark was lurching forward in his painful-looking and painstaking crab-walk that brought a lump to Johnny's throat, pushing past him and towards the front of the closet.

Johnny didn't even have time to yell out a warning about what was lying in wait inside, to wrench Mark away and behind him, when the closet door burst open almost catching him in the face and another rabid zombie -- recognizable from the furious clattering as well as the snarls and incoherent screeches that came from its mouth jumped onto Mark with such force it knocked him over.

The zombie was barely recognizable as a once-human. It's face was matted with so much blood, patches of skin gone and the side of its head even a bit dented, the skull warped like it had received trauma from a blunt object. Blood trickled down its face. Johnny couldn't even tell if it was a man or a woman, it looked so inhuman, completely unlike Mark. No wonder it mistook him for a human as well. Or was it possible that... even to other zombies, Mark still retained traces of human scent?

Usually, zombies were thought to be able to recognize each other simply by scent -- humans gave off the scent of food and prey to their trained noses. They couldn't see, and felt their way towards the direction they were headed by the sense of hearing. None of these had ever applied to Mark because they were only qualities of the fully mutated but now Johnny was desperately trying to summon up all the knowledge he had stored up in his mind.

He shoved the cabinet of drawers beside him, successfully creating a loud crash. When this drew the attention of neither Mark nor the zombie who were rolling around in a vicious and violent tussle on Johnny's floor, nipping at each other with their razorlike teeth, he picked up the water glass on his bedside table, and at his wit's end flung it at the wall.

The resulting ear-piercing shatter made the zombie look up to his relief, just losing it concentration for one moment but the distraction was enough for Mark to roll nimbly over it, kicking it into submission with stiff and uncoordinated legs and pinning it down with his hand locked on the zombie's jugular. He wasn't panting but Johnny could see the exertion in his visibly weakening strength. Mark wasn't made to fight, he was made to sit prettily in Johnny's bed and drift dreamily through his house making Johnny smile.

The thought made him lurch forward recklessly, but before he could even get his hands dirty with the zombie's dark red blood pooling around his head Mark had already taken the biggest shard of glass and was stabbing it methodically in the eye, again and again with a look of utter coldness and hatred on his face even after it stopped struggling and lay dead and lifeless beneath him. It was the second emotion after the joy over cat food that Johnny had ever seen him display and even then deep down in the dim recesses of his mind he realised that it was because of him.

Mark was angry because of him.

*

It was a breakthrough, a miracle if he could call it that. It felt like one.

Because Johnny had never known Mark could feel any emotions. He had assumed so, because all his research said so and his observations supported this hypothesis. But what if... what if Mark could feel, even the slightest inkling of emotions? What if he knew what was going on around him and recognized Johnny which was why he had protected him from danger?

Johnny knew it was foolish to hope, but he couldn't help it. Couldn't help being happy that Mark had rescued him, just when Johnny was about to give up his final hope that Mark even knew or would ever know how much Johnny had come to care for him.

*

It sustained him, this new discovery. He was like a man in the desert finding water, reevaluating all his previous assumptions and testing all his doubts again. He tirelessly raised fingers in front of Mark's glossy eyes and coaxed him till his voice was hoarse to say something, even just a single syllable that had no meaning. He tried to find ways and methods to goad Mark into losing control again, to elicit emotions of intense joy or anger or sadness or surprise from him. But after he had fought off the attacking zombie, Mark just looked through him as if he was transparent. He hadn't even helped Johnny dispose of the corpse, which Johnny had to go to great lengths to abandon at a deserted warehouse in the middle of nowhere before calling the cops with a public phone because he didn't want the risk of infection to others or there to be another outbreak start because of this.

But despite his failure, Johnny didn't give up, always keeping in mind the glimpse of the real Mark he had seen with his own eyes that night when he was killing the zombie who had dared to attack Johnny viciously and frustratedly.

Mark was inside there, he knew it. Johnny just had to find a way to help him climb out of the prison of his body.

*

Some of the videos he watched were outrageously shocking, so unbelievable they had pages of comments criticizing them for fabricating evidence. But they looked so lifelike, the shaky webcam videos of people filming themselves after they got bitten just to document their transformation which were later discovered by their grieving families. One of them showed a zombie contorting its body into an impossible pretzel, bending over backwards with its stomach in the air and legs and hands on the ground, scuttling on all fours at a rapid clip towards its prey like a giant tarantula. A bloodbath followed. It was a haunting image, the cries of the dying and grievously wounded who proceeded to transform themselves.

But Johnny never doubted that Mark wasn't one of them. He was too good to be, too strong. He wouldn't succumb to those animal -- not animal -- _beastly_ urges, wouldn't hurt and kill people in cold blood unless they had done something to cross him. It'd been almost two years since he became part-zombie and the only person Johnny had ever seen Mark hurt was the zombie that tried to kill him.

It was knowing that inside that blank, seemingly emotionless and passionless creature, there lay the young, sweet-hearted boy who had risked his life on two occasions to protect Johnny's own, who needed merely a can of cheap cat food for a reason to light up. It was this knowledge which was his sustenance and kept him going through the long lonely nights when he doubted everything, especially himself.

*

Mark was such a harmless creature to Johnny and somewhere along the way, he realised that he was no longer frightened when he looked at the lifeless, blue-eyed boy. He only felt a curious sensation of his heart aching, for what Mark must be silently going through without complaint or relief day after day. It must have felt so much more frustrating to remain half-human instead of fully turned, because then Mark hadn't yet lost all his emotions and humanity completely but he had lost the power to act on them. Neither one nor the other, but something in between. Johnny could imagine how both sides of him wrestled and struggled with each other every day, like a winged angel and horned devil perching on each of his shoulders, pitting light against dark.

And yet, there wasn't a single day that passed that Mark allowed his better nature, his very nature to triumph. He couldn't imagine how he had ever feared Mark, or thought that he might die at his hands. He was the last thing on earth Johnny could imagine being scared of now. And if Mark betrayed his trust and one day lost control and turned on him -- well, then, Johnny thought he might die happy at Mark's hands with no regrets.

He felt a sense of mounting injustice for the growing violent sentiment against zombies, or people who had any kind of the mutations of this virus. Most normal people discriminated against them as a faceless mass, generalizing and labelling and quick to jump to prejudice.

He understood that they were killers, a life-threatening danger to susceptible mortals, a menace to the population. But his Mark wasn't like that. He wasn't a bloodthirsty and heartless monster. He was so much kinder and more humane than many of the people who would fight to sentence him to die, simply because of a virus he hadn't submitted to and had been innocently infected with.

Most humans had the ability to be zombies but Johnny was sure that Mark was the only zombie who had the ability to be human.

*

Fast forward to the present --

Halloween is the only day of the year Johnny can take his pet zombie Mark out for a walk.

He had made this discovery exactly a year ago on the last day of October, when Jungwoo, one of the few -- actually the only -- friends he had made after graduating called his cell phone and invited him to come out of the house.

"Trick-or-treating?" Johnny repeated, scoffing. "How old are you?"

Jungwoo is the same age as Mark, nearing the end of his second year of university. There's only one more year left of school for Mark if he ever returns back to being human, and Johnny has begun to feel anxious. Although he knows that Mark could easily repeat the years he missed if he ever comes back to life, what he's really worried about is that he will never have a chance no matter how old he grows.

Make that no matter how old Johnny grows, because Mark isn't getting any older. Johnny tries not to think of the day he will look like Mark's father.

*

He met Jungwoo purely by a stroke of fate, at the pet store where Johnny had taken to buying industrial sized massive packs of cat food after the cans started burning a hole in his pocket after a while.

Jungwoo was also buying cat food, and he looked like the typical college student with his preppy haircut and witty tee shirt over skinny jeans and scuffed sneakers. Johnny didn't pay any attention to him as they queued up to ring up their purchases, both of them carrying the same mega pack in an unintentionally comic coincidence.

Somehow, Jungwoo found this to be valid reason to strike up a friendly conversation.

"Buying food for your cat?" he asked with a goofy grin, and Johnny resisted the intense urge to roll his eyes and reply, "Stating the obvious much?"

He just nodded curtly and shoved his hands into his pockets, taking out his phone and burying his face in it, pretending to message friends he didn't have.

"Me too!" Jungwoo chirped although no one asked, his annoying chipper brightness unable to be blocked by Johnny's screen.

He didn't reply, losing all patience and politeness. But it was when Jungwoo reached into his pocket to dig for change at the counter, and the back of his loose tee slipped down a little, revealing his shoulder blades and the knob of his neck, that Johnny gasped, his bag falling from his hands and thumping to the ground.

He wouldn't even have noticed had he not turned at the right moment and angle -- but he had, and it was unmistakable. Jungwoo had an almost perfect circle of pink bite marks pressed into his skin almost lovingly, stark against the fair skin usually hidden from the sun by his clothes and less tanned than the rest of his body. It was an unnaturally small circle, that Johnny wondered for a moment if it was created by a baby or a child... before he realised both Jungwoo and the cashier were looking at him with their eyebrows raised warily as if he was a mentally unhinged person.

He abruptly realised that he looked exactly like one as his face flamed and he bent to pick up the bag. But his mind was racing, his movements jerky and absentminded as he blindly thrust all the change in his pocket across the counter and then ran out of the shop.

He saw Jungwoo weaving between passersby holding the giant bag of cat food, about to disappear into the crowd.

He panicked. Dropping his own bag on the sidewalk, Johnny dashed forward.

Jungwoo almost lost his balance at the force of the impact with which Johnny crashed into him, and promptly grabbed the back of his shirt with his hand, pulling it down roughly in a gesture that would have been misinterpreted by nine out of ten people.

Understandably, Jungwoo yelled in shock and outrage, disarming Johnny with surprising quickness and agility and twisting Johnny's wrist in an armlock that made him turn into the one yelling for mercy in the span of three seconds.

"It's you from the --" Jungwoo faltered, but tightened his hold on Johnny when he tried to squirm out from his grip. "What the hell are you doing? Are you trying to put the moves on me in broad daylight? Please, you old perv, even if I weren't already taken I wouldn't give you the time of the day after how rude you were in the pet shop!"

He huffed after his indignant speech, dampening the effect of his furious words a little with how unintentionally cute his cheeks looked puffed up in a pout.

Johnny pressed his twitching lips together, feeling foreign because it was the first time in two years he had smiled at somebody other than Mark.

"Did you just call me an old perv?"

"I did, mister," Jungwoo replied sassily, tossing his hair as if expecting Johnny to lose it.

Johnny burst out laughing, unable to hold it in. "All right, suit yourself, just let go of me already brat."

Jungwoo was so surprised by his unexpected smile, even looking a little dazzled and disarmed -- an effect people used to tell Johnny his smile had, but he hadn't unleashed on anyone lately -- that his grip loosened and Johnny took the chance to free himself.

"But seriously, what were you doing pulling my shirt up like that?" Jungwoo demanded unceremoniously, eyeing Johnny like he was a sexual predator. Johnny supposed he deserved it.

His breath caught in his throat and he cleared it. "The -- bitemark on your back --" he said with difficulty.

In an instant, paleness washed over Jungwoo's face, his expression replaced by fear and just as quickly painted over with rehearsed composure.

"Oh, you saw it? That was just my cat. He's really cheeky and kinda wild; I haven't trimmed his claws in awhile --"

He was babbling, colour rising in his cheeks.

He abruptly shut his mouth in the middle of his sentence and asked brusquely, "Why?" His eyes flashed with something recognizable to Johnny -- defensive protectiveness, that made its appearance inside his own too whenever he felt Mark was threatened.

"It's just --" Johnny took a deep breath, knowing it was now or never. Jungwoo might be telling the truth, or he might be lying through his teeth -- Johnny had no way of knowing for sure unless he trusted his sixth sense and took the risk. "It looks awfully like a zombie bite mark."

His voice was nearly too low to be heard, the word zombie coming out in a whisper.

Jungwoo was gaping at him, and Johnny thought with triumph that he could see his guess had been right from the ashening of his parted lips, his speechlessness.

But "What are you talking about?" Jungwoo flipped his hair again, a nervous habit Johnny was learning. He hoisted up the cat food and Johnny noticed his arms were trembling. "I don't know anything about _zombies_ ," Jungwoo scoffed, voice carefully flippant and uttering the word with disdain like so many other skeptics. "I don't believe in them."

Johnny leaned forward, almost desperate. He knew for sure now and he needed this stranger to admit the truth to him, needed it so badly because he now knew what he had always subconsciously longed for but never admitted to himself -- he wanted a confidante. He wanted to find another person in his exact same position, even though he had lost faith that such a person existed. He had felt so alone for so long and now this person was finally standing in front of him, and all Johnny wanted was to confess everything to him.

"I have a zombie." The words spilled from his lips too fast, sounding ridiculous and barely decipherable. "I mean, in my house. I'm keeping one too; that's why I bought the cat food -- so please tell me, are you?"

*

Jungwoo was staring open-mouthed at him, and there was a moment of ice cold dread in which Johnny thought that this was it, all these two years of painstaking carefulness and waiting with bated breath for disaster to befall and he had brought it upon himself, walked straight into the lion's den stupidly -- when the guy's eyes narrowed and he saw a flicker of something in them. Empathy, maybe. Relief.

He leaned forward too, so close that they were whispering right by each other's ears. No one else was even near, no one else could hear but both of them were terrified because their secrets were precious to them beyond all measure.

"If I show you something, will you swear on your -- zombie's life not to breathe a word to a soul?"

*

This Halloween, Jungwoo doesn't need to call. It's become an unspoken tradition after merely a year, and Johnny lovingly dresses Mark up in an all-black outfit of fitted tee and ripped skinnies that makes the iris of his one normal eye look even more jet-black and the other bluer than sapphires.

Still unsatisfied with the effect, Johnny further highlights it by accessorizing his outfit with a choker studded with ostentatious blue crystals (which are actually genuine, an impulsive buy he had splurged on because the colour reminded him so uncannily of Mark's right eye. And seeing how stunning he looks wearing it, he doesn't regret). Today is the one day he isn't afraid of Mark standing out, of him sparkling with his inborn brightness. Today, he's not wary or fearful but proud.

Johnny feels a spike of excitement in his own chest, a feeling foreign to him because he hasn't felt it in so long. This is the first thing he's looked forward to in months, just the seemingly mundane pleasure of being able to go out into the streets holding Mark's hand like any normal couple. Not that they're _together_ or anything -- but Johnny has come to think of them as a unit, allies. Johnny and Mark against the world.

Besides being afraid of exposing his transformation, Johnny has been careful not to take Mark out for the past two years because he was afraid their schoolmates or Mark's friends would recognize him. But this one night is the only indulgence he allows himself, the cover of darkness giving them protection and anonymity.

The moonlight highlights the colour of Mark's hair, making it shimmer like the studs and hoops Johnny had fastened in his piercings and clipped to his cartilage. He looks red-carpet worthy; photograph-ready and Johnny wishes so badly that Mark knew how knee-bucklingly gorgeous he is; how much adoration he inspires in Johnny with his lost boyish handsomeness, shining heart and dull eyes.

*

Johnny isn't surprised when he meets Jungwoo halfway between his neighbourhood and the one where Jungwoo lives with his zombie, Doyoung. Except that Doyoung... isn't exactly a regular zombie. It's a long and complicated story how he came to mutate into what he is now, but suffice to say that just like Mark, he's _special_ , one of a kind. And Jungwoo couldn't be any prouder of his beloved hyung.

The last time Johnny had seen Doyoung when they met at a coffee shop, Doyoung had been in his feline form. Jungwoo prefers him to remain animal outside the house, because he attracts too much attention for his comfort when he's human, even though after years of practice and training Doyoung is able to shift completely into a human or house cat at will. Nobody in the world -- not their neighbours, friends or families -- know that Jungwoo's Persian cat Doie and Doyoung are one and the same.

Once, Johnny would have laughed in the person's face if anyone suggested to him the existence of catboys was more than a myth. But after what happened to Jaemin and Mark, he'd become a different person. One who readily believed that Doyoung was some kind of catboy-zombie mutant-hybrid, who should have been killed or in Jungwoo's words, "at least really fucked up" by the mutation of the virus transmitted from the zombie cat that bit him, but had instead, against all odds and logic, morphed into this beautiful, improbably perfect being.

*

He first saw Doyoung the cat the day he met Jungwoo at the pet store and followed him home to see what he wanted to show him.

"That damn cat," Jungwoo had blinked moisture away when Doyoung slunk out of earshot, his tail in the air and paws prowling into the kitchen with perfect grace -- Johnny saw a flash of his nude back as he transformed just beyond the threshold of the kitchen, before he could throw on clothes and make their tea, and hurriedly looked away blushing before Jungwoo noticed.

He was a little startled by how broken Jungwoo sounded, in stark contrast from his usual boyish, cheerful and innocent self. It turned out he was talking about the very zombie cat which had bitten Doyoung, which he had never been able to quite forgive despite knowing it wasn't at fault. And this in turn meant that he had never forgiven himself either -- because that cat belonged to him.

"Where is it now?" Johnny dared to ask.

"Under the ground," Jungwoo replied with no satisfaction.

"Doyoung-ssi did it after he turned?" Johnny guessed, flinching, and Jungwoo inclined his head.

"Every day, I dream of how things could have gone differently."

Johnny could read the meaning of his unsaid words, behind the said ones. _Every day, I dream of sacrifing myself in penance_.

He was shaken by the intensity of the boy's self-reproach, the regret he was living in. Even though they had just met, he wanted badly to ease the young boy's heavy burden. "Hey." He put a tentative hand on Jungwoo's. "Don't think too much about the past. Didn't he turn out fine in the end?" he comforted awkwardly.

"He looks fine," Jungwoo agreed quietly. "But I don't know how he really feels about being not only part-zombie, but part-animal too. It can't feel good and I know he struggles with his urges. I know he misses being human, but hides it behind his smile so I won't feel sad."

"That's because he loves you," Johnny said confidently, even though he had barely known Doyoung a few minutes at that time. "Because he's your hyung." He realised dimly that he had somehow started projecting his own feelings for Mark onto their relationship.

"I know," Jungwoo replied, a touch of heavy sorrow in his voice. "But I'm not a kid anymore. Sometimes I wish it had been me, because I'm way stronger. I would have been able to handle it better, the switching and the urges and the... fits he gets sometimes." He lowered his voice, pained. "He was already fragile before and the disease... just wrecked his body. He hasn't been the same since."

In Jungwoo's voice, Johnny heard the same desperation with which he prayed daily for a cure.

So he knew the words to reassure him, even though he just intoned them dully, probably sounding as unconvinced as he felt. "There will be a cure soon."

"You're right," Jungwoo replied, sounding hollow and just as unconvinced.

*

Doyoung was taking an awfully long time to make the tea. When Johnny pointed that out, Jungwoo finally laughed, looking like a kid with his mouth wide open and crooked teeth showing.

"He's probably eavesdropping. That's what he likes most of all his new abilities -- ears sensitive as a cat's. He loves hearing what I have to say about him when he's not around."

There was a wheezing sound from the kitchen and Johnny looked up, startled. Jungwoo was shaking with laughter. "That's how he sounds when he laughs in cat form. Isn't it adorable?"

It was, achingly so. They were the most adorable couple Johnny had ever seen, and he didn't even find it disgusting. He found it amazing and unbelievable that Doyoung had somehow managed to transcend the default brain death all zombies supposedly went through when they turned, which even Mark seemed to have succumbed to. He seemed alert and intelligent as any human being, highly functioning with sharp mental and physical reflexes. Maybe Jungwoo was right, and it was a blessing in disguise he had been bitten by a cat instead of a human zombie.

"It's not like there aren't benefits," Jungwoo continued, seeming relieved to confide everything he had kept bottled so long in someone else who could understand his predicament finally. "He's more affectionate and clingy and loving than he ever was since he turned. And..." he blushed, "A lot sexier. But I know the mutated genes are taking their toll on his body. It's unnatural. There's no precedent to someone like him, anywhere in the world, and that worries me. I love how he's so much more frisky and responsive now, but I hate to think of him suffering and in pain."

The noises in the kitchen had gone quiet as Jungwoo broke down, confessing to Johnny what preoccupied him the most, in a low voice that told him he hoped Doyoung wouldn't be able to hear. With a quick recap of their history, Johnny learnt that they had originally been roommates when they were in university, splitting the rent on this apartment after progressing to friendship from a sunbae-hoobae relationship in the music club in high school.

With the years, Jungwoo had developed feelings beyond platonic ones for Doyoung, but he never confessed. Doyoung was always the nicest to him out of all his dongsaengs and took care of him like a mother hen but up till the time he changed Jungwoo never knew for sure whether Doyoung saw him in a romantic way, the way Jungwoo had seen him for a year by then. And he never dared to ask because he was afraid of hearing the answer.

After Doyoung turned, for the first hellish and agonizing months, Jungwoo had nursed him back to health, taken care of him like his right hand. And Doyoung's mutation process had been eerily similar to fictional werewolf mutations, causing him to go into heat during the mating season and unable to come down from his burning fever till he was fucked.

Of course, being only a man who had been in love with Doyoung for nearly two years by then, Jungwoo jumped at the chance like it was a lifebuoy and he was drowning.

*

Naturally, their physical relationship continued even after Doyoung's sexual urges stabilized, and soon turned into a romantic one. But Jungwoo could never shake off the feeling that it was more co-dependence than love, that Doyoung had confused need and want for romance.

"And now I'll never know," he finished bleakly. "I'm sure he'll laugh it off as ridiculous and say that of course he was in love with me from the start but I don't know whether he'd be lying. Maybe he himself doesn't."

"I think he did," Johnny blurted out, then cleared his throat in embarrassment when Jungwoo looked up at him sharply.

"How...?"

"Because..." Johnny blushed at how uncharacteristic the words he was about to say was. He softened his voice. "You're such a loveable person. How could he not have been?"

Jungwoo didn't blink, but his wide eyes flooded with tears in less than a second.

"Hyung," he just said, sounding like a little kid, then ducked his head in mortification as he wiped his eyes. "Thank you. I'm glad I met you, and trusted you." He held Johnny's eyes sincerely.

Johnny smiled, automatically replied, "Me too," before realising that he meant every word. Meeting Jungwoo felt like an unexpected blessing, like running into an angel. He felt unbelievably honoured that the younger boy had confided his deepest secret that he had never told another soul in the world in him, Johnny who was a complete stranger. Johnny couldn't even imagine such a capacity to trust. He was more convinced that Doyoung had been telling the truth about always being in love with Jungwoo, than ever.

*

The kitchen was still meaningfully silent, the tea nowhere in sight. But Johnny departed that first day without drinking it, making some flimsy excuse because even though he had barely spoken to Doyoung he was sensitive enough to know that the older boy would want some private time to clear up Jungwoo's doubts and the weights he carried on his shoulders, once and for all.

The next time he saw them, Jungwoo was sunny and smiling.

*

As he is today, goofy grin wreathing his face looking too big to fit but Johnny has already gotten used to it. If Mark is the gentle spring breeze that comforts him with its calmness and tranquility, then Jungwoo is the ray of sunshine in his life breaking up the gloom.

"Be a nice kitty and shake hands with Mark, hyung," Jungwoo instructs, and Johnny raises an eyebrow at the paw Doyoung extends, which anyone else would see as a furry glove that looks uncannily real but must be part of a very well-made Halloween costume. Only Johnny knows that it, the ears pricked up eagerly from his head and the tail waving languidly behind Doyoung's back through a hole cut into the seat of his pants are as real as any other part of his body.

It looks like Jungwoo and Doyoung have relaxed their usual strict carefulness today too. It's the first time he's seen Doyoung as part-cat, part-human, in his true catboy state, and the effect is indeed magnificent. Johnny wonders if it's just Mark and Doyoung or all zombie-human hybrids are just as striking.

Mark gazes at Doyoung blankly in a way that anyone else would interpret as rude even after Doyoung has extended his furry paw for an awkward minute, but Johnny likes Doyoung for not taking offense. Instead, his lips just curl up into a sphinxlike smirk when Johnny takes Mark's hand and has to manually help him wrap it around Doyoung's paw, bending his fingers one by one. Mark's face doesn't move a muscle. Johnny is starting to think that the zombie he had killed for Johnny was a very vivid dream, but he still finds traces of its blood in uncleaned corners of his bedroom floor and wall.

Doyoung purrs and starts licking himself all over to clean his body. Jungwoo is distracted, chiding him fondly, "Hyung, I told you not to bathe in public!" Doyoung wheezes mischievously and gets down on all fours, beginning to chase his own tail instead. Johnny can't tell who's older between them for a second.

*

Doyoung is much more interactive and human-like than Mark -- but what made Johnny's heart sink, and what Jungwoo regretted the most, is that he, too, can't seem to speak. Johnny and Jungwoo pooled their knowledge and both came to a dead end regarding how partial mutations affected the power of speech, but agreed that there seemed to be some kind of blockage in both Doyoung and Mark's vocal chords, even though Doyoung could still understand human language perfectly well. Johnny wondered if one day, Mark would be able too.

Still, Johnny reminds himself that today is supposed to be celebratory and tries to let himself forget his worries for a while, just let go and enjoy himself walking side by side with Mark for one night, matching the paces of their legs together.

The four of them together, dressed up and having fun -- or at least Johnny and Jungwoo having fun chatting while Doyoung rubs his body against Jungwoo's leg to get his attention and Mark stoicly bends his underused joints into stiff steps forward like a soldier marching, dragged ahead gently by Johnny's hand enveloping his. He's like a rag doll and Johnny's heart can't help panging as he envies Doyoung's easy grace, having seemed to bypass the muscular and bone atrophy that caused zombies' function of movements to disintegrate somehow with the aid of the cat genes.

The four of them -- if Johnny closes his eyes, for a moment he can deceive his mind into the wonderful, dreamy illusion that they are four carefree young men, newly graduated from college and in love with each other, best friends on the cusp of their life, the beginning of their exciting adulthood.

He wonders if this lovely vision would have been possible, had Doyoung and Mark not gotten bitten. But before he can decide, it's already dissolved like bubbles on the surf.

*

But still, maybe it's just Johnny's overly positive imagination but Mark seems to enjoy the fresh air, the feeling of his hand in Johnny's not as cold and plank-stiff as usual. He doesn't look around him in fascination, taking in the surroundings the way Johnny imagines the human Mark would, but Johnny can hear his breaths beside him, even and audible in a way they usually aren't. He can't see well in the darkness but he even goes so far as to believe that he can see the slightest tinge of a healthful flush on Mark's cheeks. True or not, exercise and the outdoors definitely agree with Mark.

*

"Trick or treat?" Jungwoo exclaims brightly at every house they knock on -- but only the ones with cheerful orange glowing Halloween decorations on their porches because it's still not a holiday very commonly celebrated in Korea.

The strangers would deliberate for a few seconds, before noticing Mark's mountain-leveling gaze and hurriedly answer, "Treat." Doyoung meows in excitement, fur bristling as he watches them fill the plastic pumpkin pails they are carrying with candy and chocolate and sweets. The people seem amused and tickled by his cuteness, and Johnny wonders if they would run screaming if they knew Doyoung wasn't pretending. Mark's hooded, beautifully-shaped eyes look slightly wider than usual too as Johnny helps him raise his jack-o-lantern container to the waterfall of treats. When kids open the door, they playfully stroke and tug at Doyoung's tail to his protesting screeches of pain and Jungwoo shakes his head discreetly, putting his hand on Johnny's arm as he's about to step in and tell them off.

Mark jumps a little when they are walking home the long way through the fields and Doyoung takes the opportunity of the deserted expanse of land to shrink into his cat form, the first time Johnny has seen it in motion too. Johnny stares at Mark with wide eyes. He has seemed unperturbed and unruffled by everything Johnny has shown him so far, no matter how shocking, but was that because they had been too typical? His mind is racing but Mark's poker face is back again as if his fingers had never squeezed over Johnny's in alarm for one breathless heartbeat when Doyoung dropped on all fours and transformed into a cat one quarter of his human size.

Mark's blue eye glows in the dark. Johnny had found out this interesting fact long ago, of course, in the darkness of his own house, but it seems especially glittering in the different quality of the darkness beneath the night sky, a startling azure.

It's such an unnameable shade that one of the people in the houses they had visited had asked politely if he was wearing coloured contacts. Neither Mark nor Doyoung even once attacked or showed any threatening advances towards any of the humans they had come into close proximity with, despite their strong scents. This was how well they had been trained by Jungwoo and Johnny.

And Johnny could see the irony of how these unsuspecting and hapless humans' attitudes would do a hundred and eighty degree change if he revealed that Mark was a zombie, how they would persecute and shun him without even considering how they had been interacting with him without fear or awareness barely a minute ago. Because that's how humans are -- afraid of the unknown.

Why won't they give his Mark a chance? Johnny can't help thinking to himself frustratedly, even though he promised himself not to dwell on the things he couldn't change tonight.

All he knows, as he sees the stars sprinkled across the night sky reflected in Mark's android-like eyes and given a blue cast, is that it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks. Because no matter what he does or how he acts, Johnny will always, always see Mark's human side.

*

Every time Johnny feeds Mark, he is still endlessly amused and in awe of his healthy and voluminous appetite. He runs his eyes over his zombie's petite frame -- Mark isn't diminutive, but Johnny likes that he still manages to dwarf him partially because he already has the body of an adult man while Mark is still stuck at nineteen -- his almost adolescent lankiness, and wonders again where he puts away all that food, platters and platters of it, rich fatty meat and decadently thickly-cut slices swallowed whole in one gulp without even chewing.

He tells himself that's all he's wondering; that the image of Mark's coltish legs and his slick lips plumpened by the food, grease licked off quickly by a flash of pink tongue, isn't burned behind his retinas when he closes his eyes and braces himself against the wall of the shower jerking his painful erection off later.

He's panting when he finishes, knees weakened and thighs trembling from the impact of his orgasm as the hot needles of water sting his open eyes and slap his conscience awake.

Mark doesn't know -- he knows nothing, but his obliviousness somehow makes it even worse.

Johnny tells himself he's doing nothing wrong, that he hasn't desecrated Mark's purity a single bit or laid a finger on him -- not that he would respond or stop Johnny if he even wanted to, or know what was going on. He tells himself it's not about Mark -- it's only natural that he has urges; he's a healthy regular adult man in his prime who hasn't gotten laid in two years.

But for some reason, he still feels shamefully dirty.

*

It's been nearly two years since Mark disappeared from their university campus and although in the first few weeks after he got bitten, Johnny had seen Donghyuck walking around the school looking worried and wan and laboriously putting up missing person posters with half of a selfie he had taken with Mark, after having edited out his own face. He was tempted to approach him, call Donghyuck's phone number on the poster. But what would he say? Where would he even begin? _Your best friend has turned into a zombie because he was bitten by my zombie boyfriend?_

It was too ludicrous to even conceive, and he was afraid Donghyuck wouldn't take it well. In the end, he chickened out and pretended not to see the posters and how Donghyuck's face started to close up with disappointment and hopelessness as the days went by and just ripped one off the wall when no one was looking, folded it in four and shoved it deep into his pocket. He ironed the crumples out with his hands when he got back and cut out the picture with a pair of scissors, preserving it between a clear plastic folder. It's still one of the few images he has of Mark's old self to remind his increasingly foggy memory of the boy the zombie once was.

Besides Donghyuck, his parents and family had also tried to call Mark's phone which Johnny kept turned off but occasionally checked for messages and missed calls. But as the months went by and their calls went unanswered, they slowly tapered into oblivion, probably assuming Mark had found a new life in Korea and didn't want to stay in touch anymore.

In less than a year, Mark seemed to have faded from their lives and thoughts. And in less than two years, Johnny started feeling sometimes like he and Mark had fallen off the face of the earth.

The little world inhabited by the two of them, within the four drab walls of his apartment, was reserved and cloistered, time seeming to flow at a different pace.

But it was okay. Because even uncommunicative as he is, Mark is a universe fascinating and vast enough for Johnny to lose himself in.

He can't help it; it makes him wonder -- if Mark in this almost-vegetative state is already so charismatic and compelling, how much more so would he have been if Johnny had known him before?

This is how he has come to think of Mark's accident. In terms of Before and After.

*

It may sound preposterous and presumptous to think so, but Johnny feels he knows a lot about Mark. More than other people; just from observing him twenty-four-seven for two years. Even though he technically only conversed with him for a pitiably short time, Johnny feels like he knows Mark just from paying attention to the unique little mannerisms that still exist, that can't be wiped completely from his demeanor by the virus.

Even so, understandably, Mark is still a mystery to him after all this time.

Regrets are useless, but it's hard not to look back sometimes, to dwell on what might have been.

Johnny doesn't allow himself to think about such matters in the daytime -- but at night he dreams, dreams of Mark teasing him mercilessly and calling him _Johnny hyung_ with flirtatious insolence; Mark chatting with him in fluent English, native vowels flowing smooth as butter off his tongue, even smoother than his rapidfire Korean; Mark singing him to sleep with lullabies in a language that sounds even more like home because of his honeyed voice.

*

In the morning he wakes up and sees Mark beside him, haloed by sunlight, a zombie-angel, and Johnny could cry at what he had never known, the ridiculous sense of loss he feels for something he never even possessed at all.

He had started sleeping with Mark some time ago, both of them cramped into his queen-sized bed, because the nights just got so lonely and Mark was ever so warm and nice to hug, despite his cold stiffness. Mark hadn't seemed to care one way or another, falling asleep just as soundly as if Johnny wasn't present and Johnny tried to be relieved for that instead of feeling bereft.

Mark wakes up and slides out of Johnny's arms like he's part of the blankets, reaches for his muzzle, eyes flickering over Johnny impassively without lingering. Johnny had tried to hide it some time ago to stop him from wearing it, hating the way Mark looked like a beaten down animal with it on, but it hadn't gone well. Mark had thrown a tantrum and broken some things trying to turn the house over to find it. Johnny would've deluded himself into thinking it was because Mark was worried about his safety, when he knows it was more likely simply because he's a creature of habit and had grown to feel uneasy without wearing it.

Today, he takes the muzzle out of Mark's unresisting fingers on impulse. Mark remains staring at his empty hand unblinkingly, without any flicker of confusion or anger in his eyes, just uncomprehending opacity.

Recklessly, Johnny pulls him into his arms. He has never tried to embrace the zombie without prior warning, afraid to alarm or startle him into aggression, and only dares to slide his arms tentatively around him from the back at night when he's fast asleep.

But this morning, Mark just stays perfectly still in his arms, unresponsive and unresisting and wooden as a block. Johnny doesn't know what to make of it; doesn't dare to press a kiss to the crown of Mark's head no matter how much he suddenly wishes to.

"Hyung is sorry. Sorry for everything." He whispers the words into Mark's hair, burying his nose in the scent Johnny shampoos him with during his baths. He's not crying; it's just the wisps of Mark's lavender scented hair poking his eyes and making them water.

*

When Na Jaemin walks back into Johnny's life, looking just as perfect and put-together as the day Johnny fell for him when he saw him during freshman orientation in his fourth year of university, Johnny thinks it's a dream.

Naturally, it can't be reality. Even if Jaemin were alive, two years after being bitten and turning into a zombie, he couldn't possibly look this healthy, this whole; this _human_.

Unless...

"Hyung! Psst! Over here!"

"..."

"Can't you see me? Or have you already forgotten your ex-boyfriend?"

It's the inimitable whine in Jaemin's tone that tells Johnny this isn't a dreamscape.

"J-Jaemin?"

"What the hell? I've been waving to you for ages. Didn't you see me?"

"Y-yeah, I saw you hiding in those bushes, b-but... Jaemin-ah... aren't you supposed to be... dead?"

"... It's nice to see you again too."

"No, sorry, I meant, weren't you bitten by... Jeno? We... I saw you turn, and then we called the ambulance... What happened? Where did they take you? Oh my god -- have they found a cure?"

"Ow! Let go of my shoulders, hyung."

It's then that someone else climbs out from the bushes behind Jaemin.

"... Jeno?"

"Long time no see, hyung." Jeno flashes that lazy smile Johnny used to hate because he couldn't pull it off as well.

"What... How...?"

In an instant, Johnny knows for certain even without getting his answer. They've found a cure, and Jeno and Jaemin have it. That's the only reason that can explain why they look like their old selves, like any other regular human being on the street, not zombie-like in the least. The last time he saw Jaemin, his head was a bloody mess bulging with purple blood vessels and black eyes from changing and the blows of Mark's fist. Now, he's wearing clean clothes and his hair is combed, face unmarred.

"We can't be seen." Jaemin's voice is urgent, eyes tight with anxiety beneath his easy laidback smile. Jeno places a hand on his shoulder blade in a gesture eloquent with intimacy.

Johnny quickly comprehends, following their lead and ducking back into the bushes that open up into a small clearing with no one else around. "Why? Are you...?" he hisses, heart thumping and sweat rolling down his back.

Jaemin nods shortly. "We're on the run. They locked us up in a lab for nearly two years, doing all sorts of experiments on us... but they didn't count on us having a plan. We bided our time, got stonger, and escaped the moment the drug was ready."

"D-drug?" Johnny stammers, voice hoarse.

Jeno answers briskly this time. "We were lucky to be the few picked for the experiments instead of just being incinerated and disposed, because they had to keep us alive for them. Barely alive... but alive. It was hell on earth, and I thought I was just going to give up, kill myself... But then I found Jaemin again."

They exchange a look, the softness in Jaemin's eyes causing a distant pang in Johnny's heart.

"Somehow... the drugs they used to sustain us gave us back enough of our brain function to be able to concoct a plan to escape. Of course, we stole whatever drugs we could. And the rest is history." Jaemin shrugs.

Johnny gapes between them, unable to believe this unbelievable tale at first. But then he does, because the living proof is standing before him, in the flesh. He believes.

"Hyung..." Jaemin says, looking straight at him for the first time. His gaze isn't its old cocky self but humbler, mellowed. He's changed too. The past two years have made them completely different people from who they once were, the pair of college lovebirds. Their whole world was turned upside down. How could they not too?

Johnny looks at him, trying not to focus on Jeno hovering behind his back, a silent sentry with the watchful eyes he always gazed at them with whenever he was around Johnny and Jaemin, like he coveted Johnny's boyfriend for himself.

Now, Jaemin continues, getting his attention. "It was dangerous, but I had to stop by... to apologize. I haven't forgotten... how I tried to bite you two years ago. I wanted to tell you that I didn't mean it, that I wasn't myself. I would never hurt you. And I remember -- that I bit someone else."

"Mark," Johnny chokes out, the name getting stuck in his throat, and Jaemin's eyes widen as he looks at him, making Johnny wonder what he sees in his face.

"Is he... still alive?" Jaemin ventures, and closes his eyes in relief when Johnny nods quietly. "Good." His voice is filled with guilt and the compassion that made Johnny fall in love with him what seems like a lifetime ago now. Jaemin was always so much less tough than he liked to act.

Jaemin turns around, and Jeno readily lifts a stuffed-looking ratty duffel bag that makes Johnny's heart skip a beat. He watches, not daring to blink as Jaemin reaches inside and lifts out two clear glass vials, tiny and holding a minute amount of liquid, not more than a few drops in each.

"Is that...?" he croaks, knees buckling under him.

Jaemin nods tightly. "The antidote... vaccine... cure. Whatever you want to call it. It's their final product after these two years of experimentation and research; what restored us back to this state."

*

Johnny is reaching out for the vials almost greedily with both hands before Jaemin even finishes his sentence. "Please." Tears are blurring his eyes. "Tell me you got some for me."

"Of course," Jaemin says gently. "We... I would never forget you. It's all my fault you're in this state... I was so worried you'd been bitten too when I regained my consciousness."

"No... It's a long story," Johnny mutters, suddenly embarrassed.

Jaemin carefully places five vials into his equally careful, trembling hands.

"Thank you," Johnny almost sobs, so careful not to drop them as he cradles them to his chest and then tucks them into his briefcase after stripping off his suit jacket to wrap them up.

"You'll help me give one to... Mark, won't you?" Jaemin looks anxious, and Johnny nods through his tears.

"Of course. The very first. Don't worry."

"But Johnny hyung... there's a catch." It's the first time Jeno has addressed him so gently, and Johnny freezes, sensing something amiss.

"W-what catch?" He blinks, damp eyelashes catching together.

His heart grinds to a halt when they exchange powerless glances and Jaemin looks at him sympathetically.

"This drug was designed to be a vaccination for normal humans, so one injection will immunize you from the virus if you ever get bitten. The effect is supposedly permanent."

"But..." Jeno adds, "When it's injected into people who already have the virus, who have already mutated, like us --" He breaks off, eyes anguished.

"What?" Johnny forces out the word in a dry whisper, unable to stand the suspense.

Jaemin's regretful look tears at him. "The effect is milder because it can't fight mutated cells as well. It only works for a day, hyung," he says very softly.

"A day? _One_ day?" Johnny shrieks, careless of being overheard.

Jeno nods grimly. "Twenty-four hours at most."

*

"Then how are you two...?" Johnny stares at them in bewilderment, until Jaemin pushes up the long sleeves of his jacket and shows him the discoloured, yellowed bruises and swelling, dark blue marks on his prominent arm veins caused by repeated jabs of a needle.

"We shoot it up our blood every day to keep from turning back," Jeno says softly.

Johnny is shaking his head, the words choking up his throat. "No, no, it can't be true. You're lying to me."

"It's true, Johnny hyung." The resignation of Jaemin's tone as he says Johnny's name for the first and probably final time in two years makes his heart sink like a stone.

"Then give me more!" Johnny cries, like a petulant child. "I can't just -- with five --"

Jaemin exchanges an unreadable look with Jeno, before reaching reluctantly into the bag again.

"Wait." Johnny freezes. "How many more vials do you have in there?"

Jaemin looks up at him and smiles shakily, his eyes sad. "Twenty." He unzips the bag to reveal the insides to Johnny. What had looked like a lot of bulk was actually just layers and layers of newspapers thickly wrapped around the meager number of bottles to cushion them from impact.

"Twenty?!" Johnny's legs give out and Jeno catches his elbow.

He staggers, regaining his balance. "Then what are you guys going to do after... ten days?" His heart is sinking swifter than a rock thrown into a pond. He had seen Jaemin right after he changed. He was in a much worse condition than Mark, is most likely completely mutated. Johnny can't believe that the Jaemin standing in front of him, looking strapping and solid and in the pink of health, is still inhuman.

Jeno and Jaemin are silent, looking down at the ground instead of each other.

Johnny gulps, feeling an unsettling dread. "You can't go back... can you?"

Jeno just looks at him with the saddest smile Johnny has ever seen on his face. "Sure, but they'd kill us."

"We'd rather die free and together than live in captivity apart," Jaemin blurts, eyes snapping with defiance. Jeno just turns to gaze at him quietly, and the look in his eyes brings Johnny to his knees.

"Jaemin." Johnny fumbles through his tears, rummaging through his briefcase again to withdraw two of the small, precious vials with shaking fingers. "Take this." He takes Jaemin's hand and thrusts the glass bottles between his fingers.

Jaemin looks at him, tears frozen in his wide eyes. "Hyung?"

"It's not much," Johnny swallows, his voice cracking. "But... it'll give you eleven days."

There is a deep, profound silence.

Then "Eleven," Jeno murmurs dreamily, like it's a prayer, a miracle; and the look in his eyes makes Johnny's last regret fly away.

*

"Are you sure?" Jaemin presses, although his fingers curled around the vials are whitened. "You don't have to..."

"I want to," Johnny says firmly. Jeno is still looking shaken by the unexpected gift, and Johnny senses he has to be the authoritative one here for once. "You guys should go. It's not safe to hang around too long."

Jaemin's mouth works mutely, his eyes filling with tears of gratitude. But Johnny forestalls him.

"Thank you, Jaemin-ah. And..." he raises his eyes. "Jeno. Don't give up till the end. Till the very last day, there's still hope. And Nana..." Jaemin blinks rapidly again at his use of his old nickname. "It wasn't your fault, so don't blame yourself anymore. I'll see you guys... again."

Before any of them can point out the unrealistic positivity of his farewell, Johnny bends to climb out through the hedge, back onto the sidewalk.

*

On the street, people are milling about, the skies are blue and the sun is warm, just like any other day.

He wipes the dampness underneath his eyes and drops by the pharmacy on his way home to buy two clean insulin needles.

*

"Are you serious, Johnny hyung?" Jungwoo shrieks over the phone the moment the last word of the story is out of Johnny's mouth, his voice higher than Johnny has ever heard it.

"Yes, come by the house whenever you're free to get it, Jungwoo-yah," Johnny says warmly. In the span of a year, the younger boy has crept into his heart unobtrusively but irresistibly and is now one of Johnny's favourite dongsaengs. Of course, the throne still belongs to his baby zombie.

"But..." Jungwoo hesitates, voice soft. "Don't you want to keep them for yourself? I mean, you only have three..."

"No," Johnny replies immediately and unequivocally. "I want you to have one at least. I would give you two if I could, but..."

"One is plenty!" Jungwoo says quickly. When he speaks again, his voice is thick and he clears his throat. "One is more than I ever dreamed of."

Johnny swallows too.

"What about you? You're going to use one of them on yourself... right?"

"..."

"Hyung?" Jungwoo sounds worried.

"I don't know."

"What are you talking about? Johnny hyung!"

"I'll wait for you, Woo."

*

Johnny had never known the appeal of self-sacrifice, until Mark taught him how rewarding it could be. He taught Johnny by example, demonstrating how he would, even as a stranger, do the equivalent of taking a bullet for him, jumping in front of a moving train. And that was how Johnny knew that Mark has a larger capacity to give than anybody Johnny has ever known.

And so, it's only natural that until Mark can feel again, Johnny will be sensate for the both of them. He will feel twice as much, hurt twice as hard, just to make up for Mark's share. Somewhere along the way, the wispy, fragile and brave Canadian boy had unknowingly made a home in Johnny's heart. And Johnny doesn't want him to ever move out.

He lays Mark back onto his bed and looks deeply into his eyes as he ever so carefully draws the liquid from the vial into the syringe, not spilling a single drop. Mark doesn't flinch, doesn't even blink when Johnny moves the needle towards the crook of his elbow, swabs the delicate skin there with an alcohol wipe.

His eyes still stop Johnny's heart, such an incongruous shade of baby blue, like windows of sky. If eyes are windows to the soul, does that mean that Mark's soul is as endless and deep as the sky?

*

Mark doesn't move a muscle as Johnny tenderly breaches his skin with the needle, then starts pumping the contents of the small vial slowly into his vein.

One drop at a time, Johnny watches with bated breath as Mark's lashes flutter closed, his eyeballs moving beneath them, flickering beneath the thin skin of his eyelids with the first sign of life in two years.

"Sleep now, my baby," Johnny whispers, lowering his lips to Mark's ear and patting his shoulder with a soothing palm.

"When you wake up, hyung will be right here."


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the passionate responses to the first chapter! ;; quite a few people wanted to read an epilogue, so I started outlining it right away and bc I had a number of plot points I wanted to cover and tie up, it actually turned into more of a sequel than an epilogue though I tried to keep it short. The original fic is now projected to be extended by around 10k-15k words and I have the whole outline already done :) I hope you’re invested enough in this to stick around till the end of the ride! And I really hope you enjoy this first sequel chapter.
> 
> One commenter very helpfully reminded me of dowoo’s arc which was a lifesaver bc otherwise I might have forgotten to include the short hopeful ending I wanted to write for both them and nomin on top of johnny and mark haha. Also I know the first part wasn’t explicit enough so there’s going to be two proper smut scenes lol istg none of the tags are meant to be clickbaity otl
> 
> [a last note before you start reading: I’m sorry for the change to single quotation marks for dialogue, I switched to using them in my writing some time ago and have gotten too used to switch back to double. I don’t think it’ll be too jarring bc none of my readers have complained but still, I apologise!]

Mark has been sleeping for four hours since Johnny injected the antidote, and Johnny’s been by his bedside watching him unblinkingly the whole time, only leaving for a toilet break. It’s not like he could tear himself away even if he wanted to, anyway. His pulse has been shallow since he started waiting, adrenaline pumping.

Watching the movement of Mark’s eyes beneath his eyelids and long lashes so closely has him starting to feel drowsy too, but Johnny slaps himself awake. What if he dozed off and Mark doesn’t know where he is when he wakes?

Getting up to grab a glass of water for his parched throat makes a realisation strike. Mark is certain to be hungry when he rouses—for human food.

The idea rejuvenates and excites him. Mark hasn’t eaten normal food for an aeon. Johnny’s momentarily thrown by the fact that he doesn’t know what Mark likes to eat, but he pushes that unsettling awareness aside and focuses on making a hefty delivery order from a nearby restaurant, of an array of dishes.

He tries not to watch the clock as he continues keeping one eye on his silent bedroom while awaiting the food’s arrival. They only have around forty-eight hours, if his calculations are right—the cure works for one day for Jaemin and Jeno, so it should give Mark approximately double the time with his partial mutation. At least, he hopes.

He’s unloading the delivery bags and setting the takeout containers of food on the dining table when a scuffling noise from the room makes the chopsticks in his hand slip to the ground. Johnny rushes there, skidding to a halt with both hands gripping the doorframe.

Mark is sitting up in Johnny’s bed, rubbing his eyes. Eyes that Johnny sees with a jolt when they look up and lock with his own, are both pitch black.

‘M-mark?’ His heart pounds in his ears.

There’s a long, agonising silence before Mark shakes himself out of his stupor, and rasps in a voice hoarse with misuse but undeniably, gloriously _human_ : ‘Johnny hyung?’

*

Johnny can’t eat a bite of the food, rip his eyes off the boy stuffing his mouth with voracious appetite, until Mark begins to lower his gaze looking embarrassed. It’s just that Johnny doesn’t dare believe this isn’t another of his countless dreams. Mark, entirely human again, gracefully wielding cutlery to effortlessly feed himself.

He can’t stop peppering the poor boy with incessant questions. How much does he remember? How much of their time did his consciousness register? The past two years… does Mark know what they’ve been through together?

His heart kicks when he gets his answer. Mark was mostly sentient. At least, he has faint memories of the past two years in his head now, though when he was a zombie he couldn’t utilise his mind normally, and lived in a brain fog. But the hope that sweeps Johnny’s chest when Mark admits he could sense vague flickers of awareness and consciousness all along, in the periphery of his cerebrum, surprises him with its force. From Mark’s description, he had the level of cognition of an infant, able to discern things going on around him but rarely make sense of them. Apparently, the only of his senses which retained their clarity were of hunger and danger.

The relief that floods Johnny is numbing. So he had been right in his guess that Mark had not lost his intellect but was just locked away inside himself. He doesn’t know what he’d do if he had no impression of the past years, the experiences they shared.

Mark finally finishes his fill and wipes his mouth with the napkin Johnny offers, kind of sheepish. ‘Hyung,’ he says softly, licking puffy lips.

‘Hmm?’ Johnny distractedly clears his throat and pretends he wasn’t noticing the way Mark’s adam’s apple bobbed as he gulped down sikhye. Mark can tell, now, if his gaze lingers.

‘Why did you take me in?’ As if his thoughts were read, Mark says this. ‘And keep me. Two years…’

He looked shocked when Johnny confirmed how much time had passed. Johnny caught him as his knees gave out, helping him to the couch.

’Sorry,’ Mark’d whispered—this was before their meal. It seemed the smells of the food had been what dragged him out of slumber. He gave Johnny a shaky quirk of the lips as he kneeled by his side, anxious. ‘I just feel like Rip Van Winkle or something.’

Now, his straightforward question makes Johnny falter for the first time. Does Mark… think what he did was right? Johnny can’t see any other way he could’ve reacted and decided at that time, in that situation—and the period that has elapsed—but…

‘It was my fault.’ These words—they’ve ricocheted so many times in the silence of his thoughts that he only now realises it’s the first they’ve left the confines of his deepermost feelings. ‘Jaemin was supposed to bite me.’

Mark looks ashen when he raises his head, and Johnny abruptly regrets his bluntness; he should’ve been wary of triggering flashbacks of the incident.

But Mark speaks, after a weighty hush. ‘And what do you think I’d have done if I saw you get bitten and changed before my very eyes?’

Mark’s expression is ravaged when Johnny sees it. ‘You could’ve died,’ Mark says quietly. Hands curled white-knuckled in his lap.

‘Mark?’ There’s a tremor in Johnny’s voice as he dimly puts puzzle pieces together in the recesses of his memory. He senses, somehow—maybe from the body language of the person he now knows familiarly as home—that the next words are going to change his life.

‘I was following you to warn you not just out of kindness. Not just to be helpful. I…’ Mark wets his chapped lips, colour still absent from his cheeks. ‘I’d been looking at you, in school, since the start of the year. I had… I had feelings for you.’

*

Johnny can’t quite believe his ears. He’s never been so flustered in his life. What he just heard… that all this time, even before Johnny was fully aware he existed, Mark already liked him, romantically—can it be true?

The tidal wave that floods his chest is so foreign he doesn’t identify it for a few seconds—happiness.

Mark already liked him, before any of this nightmare even started. Not because Johnny has taken care of him for the past seven hundred days. Not because somewhere along the way, Johnny’d fallen irrevocably. Mark had cared for him enough to save his life not because of anything Johnny had done for him at that early stage but because of Johnny himself.

‘I would do the same again if I were given the choice,’ Mark says, the steel in his eyes belying his gentle exterior. ‘I don’t know if I’d be brave enough to do it for anyone else, but for you—‘ He breaks off, leaving Johnny reeling.

‘You haven’t answered my question,’ Mark prompts, studying Johnny with head tilted as if trying to parse his actions. Right—as far as he knew, Johnny didn’t reciprocate his feelings, wasn’t even aware who he was, back then.

Mark looks tired suddenly, as though he’s about to cry. Johnny should’ve realised how wrung out he must be from the adjustment his body and mind are going through. But Mark doesn’t look like he wants anything else except to hear Johnny’s answer to his question.

‘Because I…’ _I’m in love with you_. He knows he should say these exact words honestly, to dissipate Mark’s guilt and misunderstanding before it even develops, but he can’t spit them out. In these years, he never did anything to explicitly express it—no kisses or touches—and he never confessed to Mark in his zombie state because it simply felt like they’d already bypassed that and gotten together. But now—

‘Because I wanted to,’ Johnny replies firmly, holding Mark’s eyes for as long as he’s able.

*

‘Two days,’ Mark echoes the way he repeated _two years_ when Johnny told him. His voice vacant with the kind of despair that’s helpless.

‘I mean, that’s just my guess…’ Johnny quickly says. Mark appears shaken by his account of Jeno and Jaemin’s predicament.

‘You don't owe me anything, hyung.’ Mark studies the ground. ‘After these two days, after I go back to my old self…’

‘That’s not you,’ Johnny interrupts. Mark’s head snaps up. ‘That’s not who you are.’

‘It’s who I’ve become.’

‘Mark.’ Johnny’s hand clamps inadvertent over Mark’s wrist, his voice harshening. ‘I can’t lose you.’ He hates how desperate he sounds, but can’t stop. ‘Please don’t leave me.’

The pair of lucid jet-black eyes pierces into him, brown of the irises brought out by the shade of Mark’s hair. He’s looking at Johnny with something more than respect, something that takes him a moment to identify as adulation. Hero worship. It makes blood rush to his face. Mark’s unflinching, unabashed and curious gaze as he studies Johnny is almost too much to handle compared to the vacuous one Johnny was used to. He’d been correct regarding the force of his charisma.

It’s stupid because Johnny’s seen everything, charted every inch of him; has fed and bathed and clothed him. But like this, sparkling with vigour and skin warm as a hearth, Mark disarms him into a bumbling oaf. Especially the shy, avid glances he keeps hazarding when he thinks Johnny isn’t looking.

Johnny doesn’t make full contact with those bright, dark eyes and assents in relief when Mark changes the subject and asks if he can take a bath.

‘Of course.’ Johnny smiles at his hesitance. ‘I’ll give you the house tour after that, unless you want to rest.’

‘I’m fine.’ Mark cracks a smile at last.

*

Johnny leads him to the closet and points out the half that is his. Mark gapes. ‘Are these all… you bought all these clothes for me?’

Johnny smiles indulgently, rubbing the back of his neck. ‘A few I grabbed from your dorm room way back, but… yeah.’ He doesn’t earn very much, but Mark looks so good in everything he wears that Johnny never could resist splurging even though he was the only one who ever saw Mark.

‘Wow.’ Mark is running his fingers down the row of outfits, seeming unable to pick one out. ‘You shouldn’t waste your money on stuff like this anymore; I’m already a freeloader—‘

Johnny clicks his tongue, and when Mark freezes and looks over, wide-eyed, can’t help the word that escapes him with a smirk. ‘Cute.’

Mark flushes spontaneously, as caught off guard as himself by the sudden and flirty compliment.

It’s just—this is like a dream. Mark healthy and strong, confessing his longtime infatuation to Johnny, in the precious voice he’s hearing for the first time after those brief few exchanges two years ago. A voice so deep and low and warm Johnny could drown in it. He wants to whip out his phone to start recording everything Mark says for the next two days so he can play it back any time he desires in future, but Johnny doesn’t want to scare Mark or dishearten him further.

It’s all he’s ever wished for. Can he be blamed for being giddy with happiness?

Though the air between them is a tad awkward, though some of Mark’s motions make him feel like a stranger—it's improbably perfect. Impossibly familiar. Mark is… he’s exactly like Johnny imagined, except softer in every way. The way he switches between Korean and English makes Johnny’s stomach flip.

Not gratitude, but love. That’s how not just one, but both of them feel towards each other. For Mark to have put his life on the line like that for Johnny without hesitating, it must not have been a shallow crush.

 _I can’t live without you. I want us to spend the rest of our lives together_.

He knows he’ll have to say these words before the two days are over.

*

Mark comes out of the bathroom, smelling like their lavender shampoo. Johnny avoids looking at the clock. He wants to enjoy these days to the fullest without dreading the end—and more importantly help Mark enjoy this precious parole.

‘Do you… want to go out?’

Mark parts his lips, artless eyes rounding. ‘Can we?’

Jungwoo throws his arms around Johnny in a bear hug the moment they arrive at the cafe, making Mark’s brows knit although he was the one who said what he wanted to do most outdoors was meet their two friends again.

Jungwoo doesn’t need to explain why he’s shiny-eyed with gratitude, merely places a hand on the small of Doyoung’s back as Johnny hears his voice for the initial time. ‘Thank you, Johnny hyung.’

‘You’re welcome.’ They’re in public but Johnny chokes up a little nevertheless. He remembers his yearning from last Halloween that the four of them could meet each other like this as if everything was normal, hale and hearty and chatting about everything under the sun.

Later, he’s the one who gets bothered when Jungwoo pinches Mark’s cheek with great affection. He hasn’t stopped cooing about how adorable Mark is since they met, as though it’s their first encounter.

‘Relax, hyung. He’s not going to break,’ Jungwoo chortles knowingly when he spots Johnny’s expression. Johnny pouts more when Mark agrees with that laugh of his. Johnny hasn’t even made him laugh yet; who is Jungwoo to?

Neither of them appear ruffled by his huffiness, and Jungwoo slings a cheerful arm around Mark’s shoulders magnanimously offering to buy him a slice of his favourite cake.

Before they leave the cafe, Doyoung and Mark go to the restroom together and Mark returns alone cradling a blue-eyed cat, spending the subsequent five minutes stroking its long fur under the table after handing Doyoung’s neatly folded clothes to an amused Jungwoo. It looked like everyone else was as charmed by Mark as Johnny.

*

When they get home, Johnny brews his famous coffee for Mark in his percolator because he ordered juice at the cafe and says coffee is one of the tastes he missed most. They recline on the couch and sip it as Netflix plays in the background. Johnny asks if Mark is cold; they shift closer and gradually start cuddling.

With Mark in his arms, Johnny wonders—does this mean he doesn’t have to say the words, that Mark’s already aware how he feels?

It’s a silly but nice kind of ambiguousness, the sort of confusion regular people—regular couples—have.

Mark’s almost in his lap by now, the intimacy automatic to the point neither of them think twice. Programmed into their subconscious muscle memories. In this languid and comfortable atmosphere, Johnny musters the courage to take out his phone and record a video.

He sees Mark blanch in the camera, and places the phone aside, concerned. ‘Do you mind?’

’No, go ahead.’ Mark clears his throat and tries to smile. ‘I just… suddenly remembered my mom.’ He shrugs, though pain flickers over his face. ‘I hope my family is okay.’

Johnny straightens, solemn, hating to see him hurting. ‘Do you want to contact them?’ he asks softly.

Mark ruminates, then shakes his head. ’No… I think it’s better for them to remain in the dark until I’m cured. I don’t want to implicate them too.’ _The way I’ve dragged you into this_ , he clearly refrains from adding. ‘We still haven’t figured out what’s really going on. I think the less people know my whereabouts, the better.

‘Most importantly…’ he adds after a tentative pause, ‘I don’t want to endanger you again.’ It dawns on Johnny that he recalls the murderous zombie who broke into their house, reproaches himself for attracting it.

Mark crosses his heart and closes his eyes then, murmuring a prayer. Even without getting it on video, Johnny etches the image into his own heart’s eye, Mark’s devout and calm countenance, his serious sincerity. He busies himself with propping the phone on the coffee table with the camera facing them, and gives Mark privacy to finish praying.

‘You said… I caught your attention from the start of freshman year?’ He feels embarrassed bringing it up, but the curiosity’s eating at him.

The slightest redness tinges Mark’s cheeks too, but he nods.

‘Why?’ Flustered by the stilted silence that meets his question, Johnny lightens the tension by joking, ’It was my devastating good looks, wasn’t it?’

Mark snorts and swats the vain hand Johnny rakes through his hair. ‘Dork.’

He takes another sip from his cup, seeming to enjoy the coffee Johnny made, before answering.

‘When I saw you in class… it felt like I’d never met anybody so confident and strong before.’ He bites his lip. ‘Like as long as I could be beside you, everything would be okay, somehow.’

Johnny senses more than sees him cringing from mortification in the ensuing quiet. He’s about to break it, though he’s too blown away his mind is blank, when Mark surprises him by going on.

‘I know I was right, now. You’re an amazing person. Even more so than I’d imagined. You don’t deserve… this.’

‘This?’

‘To be saddled with a vegetable.’

’The fuck?’ Johnny can’t control his knee-jerk reaction. ‘Don’t call yourself that.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Mark’s hands are clenched in his lap. ‘I just can’t help feeling useless, like deadweight. You’ve been working so hard for us, for me; you even got me the vaccine and I—‘

‘Mark.’ Johnny turns to take his shoulders without warning. Mark gazes up at him, heart in eyes. It makes Johnny falter but he pushes on.

‘You’re the reason I get up every morning. You’re my reason for—‘ _Living_ , Johnny fails to finish. ‘Trust me?’ he mumbles instead, voice cracking.

Mark jerks his head down mutely, stare riveted on his face. Johnny wonders what he sees there. His hands stay curled around Mark’s upper arms, unwilling to let go.

‘I’m going to fix this. You’ll be right back to normal in no time,’ he mutters, and means it. As the person who loves Mark, the person who’s _trusted_ by Mark, how could Johnny allow him to go on suffering, as good as paralysed? What Mark’s been living—it’s not a life. It’s hell.

Now he’s gotten a taste of what’s possible, the longing he feels for this is so physical it’s an ache. Just the two of them puttering around the little apartment, meeting their friends—things mundane to regular humans, which even he himself used to take for granted—if only it could be like this, forever.

The world is spinning on, apathetic as ever. Johnny tries not to dwell on the _unfairness_ , the sickening sensation of wondering _why him? Why them?_ Truth is, he understands Mark’s frustration—is the one who understands it best. He knows he can’t sit back and wait any longer. That he would jump through hoops of fire to save this defenceless boy.

‘Johnny,’ Mark says quietly, dragging him to the present. He blinks.

‘Huh?’ is all he manages before Mark is moving, eyes hungry on his lips and intent clear, and Johnny can do nothing but lean forward as though hypnotised until they meet in the middle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next [last] 2 chapters will be posted as soon as possible! Next one is completely smut lmao. I hope my continuation didn’t disappoint, I tried my best so I wouldn’t butcher the verse so many readers are fond of. I have a pretty definitive happy ending planned so you can anticipate it hehe. In the meantime, don’t hesitate to let me know if you spot any plotholes!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I AM SO SORRY TO SAY THIS HAS BEEN EXTENDED TO 5 CHAPTERS ;; the smut seriously got longer than I expected like,, this whole chap is smut and I’m still not done with the second round of sex lmao im crying. I promise this is the only and last extension though and the story will be properly concluded by chapter 5, there won’t be an epilogue or anything! Also, I’ll try to post the next 2 chapters quicker, likely within two days of each other.
> 
> The projected final wordcount for the full fic is unchanged, approx 32k words :)

Mindful that Mark must be tuckered from the eventful day, Johnny ushers him to turn in early, tucking him into his own bed. He prepares to take the couch, not wanting to crowd the fragile boy and intrude on his rest, but Mark melts into a heart-rending expression and snags his shirt hem before he can leave. They end up in Johnny’s bed together, not for the first time but for the first time Mark is aware.

Turns out, Johnny is the one who’s more exhausted than he thought, from all the excitement and adrenaline. He sinks into instant slumber with an involuntarily smothering arm draped over his bedfellow, but awakens in the early morning alone.

He sits up with confusion in his gut, swinging his legs off the bed and casting a glance at the Mark-shaped indentation in the sheets before going searching.

His worry is assuaged upon seeing the ajar bathroom door, light on beyond. Without thinking, Johnny creaks it open and steps in. Only to be greeted by the sight of Mark standing under needles of water from the showerhead, dick in his hand.

Johnny swivels around on reflex, heart flying into his throat. But he finds himself facing the reflection in the cloudy mirror of what’s behind. Mark’s let go of his penis in shock, but Johnny can now see it’s standing in a manner it never has all the times he’s seen Mark nude. Holy fuck. Johnny knows he should dash out the bathroom and leave his poor lover privacy, but he has to dig nails into palms to stop himself reaching to wipe the steam from the mirror for a clearer view.

‘Markie?’ His voice comes in a croak.

‘Hyung.’ In the mirror, Mark covers his face with both hands, seeming oblivious that Johnny is privy to everything. A gesture so painfully innocent it breaks Johnny, coupled with his anguished utterance.

Acting independent of his volition, his body pivots and advances towards Mark in two strides. When Johnny is before him, Mark’s arms fall awkwardly to hover in front of his groin and he raises his stricken face to Johnny’s.

Johnny takes one more step into his personal space, so Mark has to crane his neck to look at him. Warm water rains down and soaks Johnny’s face. He wipes his hand over his forehead, and realises his pajama bottoms accidentally brushed the tip of Mark’s hard-on when Mark jumps and hisses.

The clumsy wrap of his hand can’t hide the flush and rigidity of his boner, which has flagged but not gone down. Johnny’s head swims and his own crotch stirs behind layers of clothing.

He doesn’t stop towering over his pale boyfriend as he braces both hands on the wall to trap Mark between his arms, reminding him at the same time of the height and strength he’s got on him. Mark blinks rapidly, lifting one hand to push wet bangs off his lashes too. His wrist quavers, looking absurdly guilty as if he’s been caught red-handed. Which, well, he has. But Johnny doesn’t know why Mark seems to be worried he’s mad.

In fact, he’s filled with relief that Mark is obviously still very much human and his conjecture that the antidote would work longer for him was right. Of course, he has the second vial if it turned out to be necessary, but…

Johnny abandons this train of thought for the moment to address the pressing issue. Mark is still trying to cover himself, with such pained awkwardness it wrings Johnny.

‘I’m sorry,’ Johnny hears muttered under the shower rush. He slides a hand down the smooth plane of Mark’s back to gather him nearer, drawing a gasp.

‘What for?’ Johnny bends to whisper by his ear, low.

‘This is so shameful,’ comes the response in a near-sob. ‘I’m so dirty—‘

‘Baby.’ His interruption halts Mark as if by magic. ‘You have nothing to be ashamed of in front of hyung.’

When Mark cuts dark eyes upward through his lashes, Johnny’s insides quake at the intense, needy flash in them. A whimper escapes Mark’s bitten lips.

Johnny can’t hold back longer from reaching to take Mark’s chin between his fingers and tilt his vermillion cheeks up, softly replacing the teeth worrying at those lips with his own mouth and tongue.

Realising he hasn’t brushed his teeth, Johnny refrains from kissing him deeply, but Mark doesn’t notice, chasing his mouth with eyes squeezed shut. It’s hopelessly endearing.

It hadn’t occurred to him that becoming human again would naturally return Mark his human needs too, but it should have. Out of compassion for how vulnerable he looks when he reopens his eyes, Johnny gently says, ’Turn around.’

He reaches around Mark to switch the shower off after he obeys, and can’t resist mouthing at his pretty neck as Johnny follows the last rivulets of water sluicing down the curve of his abdomen with his touch.

Mark’s cock is at full mast again, little hitches of breath Johnny can only hear because of their proximity leaving his vocal chords. Johnny wraps his larger hand around Mark’s on the organ, eliciting a choked curse.

Johnny’s clothes are soaked, but instead of feeling cold the entirety of his blood is on fire. _He’s_ the feral one, not Mark. What can only be described as sensory overload crashes his system, shorting it. Mark’s cock scorches between his fingers, hypersensitive as Johnny’s grasp tightens.

Mark’s limber, dancer-like body which showed no signs of rustiness despite the lack of use for so long—Johnny finally has it caged in his embrace as he’s thirsted to since the previous morning. Completely enveloped by Johnny’s broader frame, safe and protected for that moment.

Mark gasps as he dips his mouth into the crook of his neck again, licking water from his clavicle—Johnny’s breaths must be hot. Johnny eases Mark’s fingers off his erection so he can feel it fully and help him to climax without wasting another second. A shudder rips through Mark as Johnny takes purchase of his cock, index finger rubbing the swollen head.

Mark throws his head back against Johnny’s shoulder, panting through open mouth. His cock jumps in Johnny’s fist with impending release. Sheer pleasure and ecstasy contort his transparent features and Johnny feels pride surge that he managed to undo Mark like this.

 _Ah, hyung, please_ , Mark is begging, coherency unraveling. Johnny pulls at his cock over and over with long, slow drags. Wrist twisting on the upstroke. Mark’s almost pained moans resound around the bathroom as his body writhes, pressing back into Johnny’s.

Cum shoots from the tip of the cock in his hand without warning on the end of a tug. Mark cries out and his body tightens with the force of the orgasm wracking him. He cums copiously, streaking so far some hits the tile wall. Johnny doesn’t let go of his cock, milking him of the last drops.

Mark dissolves into boneless mush against him, wrung and nearly sobbing with relief. His dick goes soft in Johnny’s hand.

Mark’s gaze suckerpunches the air out of Johnny when he swings around to regard him. It’s stripped bare, still dilated with lust, his voice scraped raw.

‘You’re hard.’

It’s then that Johnny realises two things—his clothed semi is poking into Mark’s gorgeous, firm ass, and Johnny’s fingers are still furled possessively over Mark’s pelvic bones, keeping him pressed flush.

Johnny shivers and becomes the one shuffling away in humiliation. Mark’s eyes burn, disappointment creeping in when Johnny backs off. Johnny can’t make eye contact, the ridge of his stiffness straining against the clothes obvious because they’re damp. A wounded noise slips out of him when Mark surprises his cock with a caress.

‘Let me help you too, hyungie?’ His voice is so gentle, and pleading.

Johnny suppresses the need pooling below his stomach and grabs a large towel hanging nearby to throw over Mark’s shoulders. ‘Go wait for me in the room. I need to wash up.’

Despite his gruffness, Mark brightens.

Johnny leans a hand on the cool wall to sober himself, senses spinning after Mark leaves in nothing but the towel. ‘Get dressed or you’ll catch cold!’ Johnny calls, shaking his head. It clears his brain a bit and he snaps into wobbly action, brushing his teeth and trying to pee.

He’s been doing his best to ignore it, but the sheer stimuli of being around human Mark, the pheromones he seems to exude, has Johnny realising just how _touch-starved_ he’s been for the past two years. He never thought about anybody but Mark, never _needed_ anybody else, but the celibacy appears to be hitting him abrupt and hard.

It’s like attempting not to think of an elephant after forbidding oneself to—how Mark can be so thoroughly familiar and brand new at the same time, almost mysterious to Johnny.

*

Mark is apparently bent on driving him out of his mind with how he’s still naked, only the towel draped atop his lower half when Johnny crosses his bedroom threshold. Johnny clenches his fists with a sharp inhale. Takes unsteady steps to close the distance between them.

He leans over Mark apprehensively and in a smooth move Mark pulls Johnny between the sprawl of his legs, mouth seeking his. His hands map Johnny’s shoulder blades as Johnny cups his jaw and neck, their tongues brushing.

He untangles himself after breathless minutes, Mark’s appetite ravenous despite just having come. But he merely loops arms innocently around Johnny’s neck, burying his face in his chest and nestling closer. Mark smells so _human_ , in spite of not differing from his usual scent. It doesn’t make sense.

Johnny removes his shirt and compels Mark to wear it, almost nagging. Mark laughs and does as he says, but then to Johnny’s chagrin lifts the towel off his crotch and starts rubbing Johnny’s hair and torso where they’re sitting together in bed, frowning that he didn’t dry himself properly.

Johnny hadn’t even noticed, rushing to get here to Mark. He’d just peeled off his wet shirt and drawstring bottoms and thrown on a fresh tee over his boxers.

Mark finds and kisses the tattoos on his bare torso one by one. His knuckles graze Johnny’s unabated erection either accidentally or on purpose. Johnny hisses a pained sigh through his teeth as Mark’s fingers move to feel out the shape of his hardness with wonder.

‘I need to tell you something,’ Mark whispers. Johnny’s pulse misses a beat.

‘Yeah?’

Mark swallows. ‘I’ve never had sex before.’

Johnny freezes. Mark is a virgin? He never really thought about it—okay, maybe he wondered—but it’s plausible. Mark was only nineteen when he turned, fresh off the boat from Canada. It makes sense that he was so responsive in the bathroom a while ago. Mark’s first time. It stuns Johnny how his ribs squeeze with relief when he understands the person who took it, who will take it, is nobody else but him. He’s never felt as much ownership over this person as he does right now.

 _Mine_ , the thought seizes him fiercely.

But—if Mark’s body hasn’t experienced penetrative sex before, then Johnny can’t help being twice as worried on top of his initial reservations about Mark’s strength. Mark is relying on that tiny vial of antidote to cling to his humanity by a thread. What if Johnny accidentally hurt him or pushed him too far?

As though reading him like an open book again, Mark sends Johnny a resolute, tremulous half-smile.

‘I can handle it. We aren’t sure when’s the next time we can…’ He gulps and Johnny can hear the lump in his throat. ‘I really want this.’ Mark pins him with beseeching, imploring stare.

It’s enough to push Johnny past his tipping point. Mark has to have everything he wants. Even if he asks for all of Johnny. Even more.

He picks up Mark’s hand and brings it to his lips, dropping a reverent kiss in the soft palm. Mark smiles and revels in his worship, like he knows he owns Johnny.

His beloved, who’s pure as driven snow in every way. Johnny never felt this way about Jaemin or his prior girlfriend. A savagery matched only by his craving to be painstakingly gentle. Not just gentle—tender. Johnny always preferred dating the same gender because he could be rougher, more masculine around guys, but Mark makes him want to treat him like blown glass.

The oxygen between them crackles like kindling, incendiary. He never knew he could feel such desire. That desire could feel like this, licking through him vein by vein.

Mark’s eager grin turns coy. His next words cause Johnny to choke on his spit.

‘Would you like to use my handcuffs, master?’

Johnny goes beetroot under Mark’s cheeky giggle. He swears he’s going crazy today.

The traces of laughter are replaced by arousal as Johnny swipes the pad of his thumb across those chapped but pillowy lips. Mark parts them and exhales heated on Johnny’s fingertips, not moaning but looking one breath away.

The _want_ is all-encompassing, all-consuming.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope my smut isn’t cringy! The next two chapters are basically going to be Cute Boyfriends in Domestic Bliss
> 
> The following is some notes I feel would be more suited for the end of the fic, but I’m just gonna leave here anyway because I know the warm support this fic has received is what’s helping me finish it, so it doesn’t feel out of place to thank readers for it here either :)
> 
> When I deleted the original got7 version of the oneshot in chap 1 last year, it’d been up for 4 years but only received 137 kudos [which is not a small number, but just in comparison with how this has accrued almost the same amount in a week…] mostly due to the got7 pairing I wrote it for being a super rare pair lmao [and also I locked the fic a couple years back due to the reason I’m abt to explain I ended up deleting it]. The main reason I deleted it was bc I am a huge animal lover and unusually - almost abnormally - sensitive about anything related to them and the original fic had like 2 lines about jungwoo’s character saying he killed the zombie cat which bit doyoung and being angry with it, which I deleted and edited during the rework. Probably an overreaction but it bothered me, bc like,, gdi the poor [fictional] cat didn’t have a choice in being turned either lol and it just became one of those things which are magnified to me as a writer while readers don’t notice anything wrong. Like I said I’m hypersensitive abt this subject, honestly even thinking about pigs being slaughtered for meat makes me sad lol ;;
> 
> i actually proceeded to almost forget about this fic after that and legit randomly remembered its existence last week. I’m sure you can imagine I never expected this story to see the light of the world again, and even be able to touch a number of hearts. It was around then I remembered how I’d laboured to write the first 20k words years ago and I just suddenly felt really moved. I’ve been an ahgase since 2014 so ngl the last 2 weeks have been rough, but working on this fic helped me, and the fact that it managed to find a connection with so many sweet people a long time after its birth inspired hope in me somehow, giving me the feeling that things which have love in them always have a chance of revival. So im probably overdramatising again but being able to not only give this fic a new lease but also add on to it with the support of many, means a lot to me. And thank *you* if you’re one of the special readers who’s reading this as a WIP during the process of it taking shape :)
> 
> [also idk if there’s a possibility any other igot7s are reading this but like I said I found writing helpful in this period so you could try it too if you need a distraction! <3]
> 
> Lastly, this is completely irrelevant but I’m about to make a statement about animal rights so if you don’t want to read it, don’t!
> 
> I’m sure most people already know this, but all animals feel love, pain and fear like human beings. Pigs are as intelligent as dogs, for example. And it’s always a kinder choice for us humans to eat ethically-sourced animal products, if and when possible :)
> 
> I know this is a strange and awkward place to say this and this note is getting outrageously long so I’m sorry for rambling about nonsense but since I just so happened to be on the topic, I didn’t want to miss the chance to make this statement which as I mentioned is a cause I feel strongly about haha. But I know some people may [understandably] not like to hear that food has feelings, plus this really is a wildly bizarre place to bring this up, but being aware that many other people who wish to make this statement do not have the opportunity of hundreds of people seeing it that I do, I decided to thicken my skin and throw it out hehe
> 
> [pls have my heart if you made it till the end of this note lol]


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic is on track for the estimated total wordcount of around 32k words, give or take! :) honestly the last time I wrote a 30k word fic was almost a year ago and I expected neither for this to get to that length, nor for so many people to be willing to read an AU so different from normal, and of this length to boot. I can only hope that reading this fic is fulfilling to readers, and thank you for letting me not be the only one invested in this story, for being interested enough in the original oneshot to read on into these sequel chapters. Just a reminder that there WILL be a happy ending for all 3 pairings lol im not a sadist ;)
> 
> Pay attention to the chapter numbers before reading as I’m starting to update quicker than before! And that’s all for today’s ramble lol

After their first kiss yesterday, Mark had seemed to want to go further, but Johnny pulled back due to his reservations and they ended up spending the remainder of the day giving Mark a new hair colour with the instant DIY dye they’d purchased from the shopping mall where they met Jungwoo and Doyoung. Mark cheerfully declared that he wanted a fresh hair shade, since his roots weren’t growing out anyway until he’s cured, and even told Johnny he could dye Mark’s hair anytime he wished after he changed back.

Johnny hasn’t quite been able to take his eyes off Mark’s new ash blonde tresses since. He somehow looks even more captivating than before.

Johnny kisses the soft inside of Mark’s raised arm after lifting his shirt over his head and tossing it to the side. He raises his hips to let Mark pull his boxers down, both their quickening breaths getting audible. Johnny’s cock springs free, partially erect.

He bites off an oath when Mark takes hold of it, tongue darting over his lips as he seems to size up Johnny’s dick, transfixed. Johnny’s cock fills more in his loose, dry grasp. He yelps out loud when Mark leans down to give the crown an experimental lick, hand flying to grip Mark’s shoulder.

‘Don’t,’ he stutters, voice strangled, ‘I’ll cum before I can fuck you.’

Sure enough, he’s fully up now, a pearl of precum beading at the slit.

Johnny takes bracing breaths and tries not to feel self-conscious as Mark follows his brusque movements to retrieve the tube of lube in his nightstand, cock bobbing foolishly the whole way.

His face is hot by the time he climbs onto the bed to rejoin Mark, and its temperature rises when greeted by the sight of Mark already readily spread open, hooded gaze penetrating Johnny through the V of his legs.

Johnny adjusts the pillow below Mark’s shoulders and head, then settles between his legs and uncaps the lubricant, warming it between his fingers.

They’re shaking as he presses them to Mark’s entrance and Mark grabs both thighs to prise them further apart for Johnny, panting. Johnny kisses his inner thigh as he slides the first finger past the rim.

‘Does it hurt?’ A frantic shake of the head. Mark’s whole body has stiffened. ‘Loosen up. Count with me.’

Mark obediently takes shallow inhales through his mouth and Johnny withdraws before following with two digits this time. Mark groans.

‘Can you take three?’

Johnny crooks his fingers inside the overwhelming tightness, his other hand laced in a reassuring lock with one of Mark’s, the same way he’d grabbed for Johnny’s bicep as he climbed to orgasm earlier in the bathroom, like an anchor. Mark’s dick has risen again, pointing up into the air and starting to flush as Johnny moved his fingers.

Mark gasps at the sudden absence when Johnny retracts the digits. He hands Mark the tube and whispers to him to douse his dick with a bit too.

Mark is painfully gentle, eyes wide. His hand shivers at the heat of it as it closes around Johnny’s cock like a joystick. The coolness of the lube is the only thing preventing Johnny from coming there and then. He’s so rock hard it feels like every nerve ending in his body is concentrated south.

‘Angel, get on your hands and knees for me.’ Mark scrambles to, aware of his diminishing restraint. Johnny scoots into the space between his legs and his hands settle on the knobs of Mark’s hipbones.

Mark’s porcelain skin is prettily pinkened all over, his ears red. It’s the singular most erotic vista Johnny’s gazed upon. Mark’s thighs tremble as he finds his balance, Johnny’s grasp stabling him. Mark’s cock hangs heavy beneath him.

Johnny jerks himself a little, smearing the liberal precum that’s accumulated with the lube. He spreads Mark’s hole carefully open with two fingers and Mark pushes back against them, impatient. Johnny’s cock thickens impossibly further at his lewdness and he takes ahold of his wits, gives himself one last pump before aligning and nudging in slowly until he’s sinking into the sweet heat.

He goes as far as he can, the clench of Mark’s walls gripping him vicelike. Johnny looks down at Mark’s cheeks spread around the pole of his cock and forces words out.

‘How do you feel? We can stop if it hurts.’

Mark seems to have been keeping deliberately quiet with the whine he lets out now. ‘No, feels so good. Don’t stop.’

‘You feel good?’ Johnny can’t help his breathless smile of pleased relief though Mark can’t see him. He’s not small, and it’s Mark’s first time, so he’d been worried.

‘I feel… full. In a good way.’ Mark is so sweet, struggling to respond to his queries even at this juncture. Johnny judges that they’re unfounded and gently pulls out to the tip before sliding in again. Bottoming out this time.

‘Ah!’ Mark constricts around him, head dropping. He seems to push back even more against Johnny’s pelvis. Johnny throbs inside of him. It’s hard to regulate his ragged breathing.

‘Relax, love,’ he manages. Realising his hands are slippery from the lube when he tightens them on Mark’s hips, he gropes blindly for the shirt to wipe them.

With this mind-blowing sight and sensation of Mark taking all of his girth like such a good boy, _sucking_ him in, it’s difficult not to slam into his warmth as Johnny’s body hungers. He takes it slow instead, feeling himself stretching Mark’s tight hole open as it accommodates him, going deep with slick sounds of skin slapping skin. The intimacy of this body yielding to his intrusion, his hard cock breaching the ring of prior-untouched muscle and reshaping this boy from the inside around his pulsing erection, is dizzying.

Mark arches his back and moans pornographically. Johnny feels himself starting to crest, precum glistening on his flushed, fat cock as he thrusts again and again, pace having picked up to punishing unconsciously.

He swells further in the squeeze of Mark’s hole, all the blood in his body rushing to his cock as every spear of his hips forward rocks Mark’s body with its force, making him fist the sheets to keep steady. Sweat beads on Johnny’s temple as the primal pressure he’d almost forgotten builds relentlessly.

‘All right?’ He checks one last time, his only response a garbled almost-yell urging him on. Johnny holds himself enveloped with one hand on the nubile body while the other remembers to reach down for Mark, who’s started leaking. He throws his head back as Johnny grabs him and precum drips from Mark’s cock through his fingers. It throbs angrily and Mark bucks forward on instinct into the ring of his hand, making Johnny slip out of him. His dick slaps Mark’s cheeks as they both groan.

Johnny reinserts himself, not wanting to cum because this is heaven right here, the way their bodies fit into each other’s like a glove—yet knowing its inevitability. He’s only lasted this long because he was holding back his orgasm in a way he never controlled before, wanting to drag out the ecstasy for as long as possible.

He had to release Mark’s erection to plunge in but when Johnny tries to circle it again Mark bites out for him to let go.

‘I can cum untouched.’ His voice is higher-pitched than usual. ‘I can do it.’

‘Fuck,’ Johnny breathes, his hips not stopping. ‘You want me to…’

‘Fuck me through it, hyung.’ The head of Johnny’s cock inadvertently assaults his prostate with how hard he drives in in reaction. Mark keens long and low, thighs beginning to tremble. Johnny pistons forcefully in and out, finding that sweet spot once more while not losing his pace, and before long feels Mark starting to shake to orgasm surrounding him.

Mark’s body spasms through his second orgasm with such violence Johnny half-worries he’s changing back, cum squirting onto the sheets and his chin. Johnny catches himself, axis slipping back from off-kilter, still embedded between his ass cheeks on the end of the thrust that pushed him over the brink.

‘You made a mess of yourself,’ he teases, and Mark gasps a wrecked laugh, which Johnny feels the vibrations of through his dick.

‘Now you.’ Mark’s biceps ripple as he pushes back on Johnny’s dick, glancing over his shoulder. His face is entirely crimson. ‘Don’t pull out.’ The filth of his next words shocks Johnny. ‘Cum for me, hyung. Use me.’

Feeling like the air’s been punched out his lungs, Johnny can do nothing but follow the command. He throws his head back, teeth gritted as he chases the high within arm’s reach like an addict, barely able to hold on. Soaring.

The musk of lovemaking and sex heavy in the air, the squelching sounds as he disappears into Mark’s increasingly messy hole, the staccato grunts his sharp thrusts shudder out of Mark combine to raise him to a feverish pitch. Johnny warns as he squeezes Mark’s hipbones bruisingly: ‘I’m gonna cum.’

Mark nods, upper arms flexing in anticipation.

‘Cum inside me, John,’ he moans weakly. It pushes Johnny over the edge of his imminent release. Thighs shaking, he grinds into Mark a final time and Mark clenches in passionate response. Buried in him, Johnny falls apart with unceremonious grunts and groans, cum gushing out like a geyser until it leaks from around the sides of his cock. He can’t catch his breath, his heart. He’s never come so much in his life. Aftershocks continue to judder through his frame even after he stops.

Johnny pulls out gently at last, both of them inhaling sharply at the slide, the trickle of cum that cascades down Mark’s inner thigh making his gut flutter. Mark collapses on his side, chest heaving and Johnny opens his twitching hole with his fingers, more cum spilling and dampening the sheets below. Mark whimpers.

‘You okay, buddy?’ Johnny’s abruptly so aware he overexerted him, he doesn’t even notice he’s also panting like he just finished a marathon. He brushes the matted hair on his boyfriend’s forehead, tender.

‘I’m fine.’ Mark’s delighted laugh is like church bells, like silver. ‘Not that I got anything to compare it to, but I’m pretty sure that was the best sex of my life.’

*

When Johnny exits the shower, Mark is sprawled on the sofa playing a game on Johnny’s switch, legs up and arms around his knees. He looks so boyish it tears at Johnny. His damp hair from his own shower before Johnny’s is uncombed and in an adorable tousle.

 _His Minhyung_. God, Johnny is so _so_ in love with him it feels like this love’s going to rip him to shreds.

‘C’mere, babe.’ Mark lowers the console and trots towards him, good as gold. Johnny combs fond fingers through his platinum bangs. ‘Hungry? What d’you wanna order?’

‘I could cook for hyung,’ his baby offers generously, but Johnny laughs and slaps his rear, saying he’s worn out enough for the day. When he gets back from making the order the sofa is empty.

Johnny hates the way his heart drops but also knows it’ll never stop. He plasters a smile on his face when Mark skips out of their bedroom in a hoodie of his, regular fit on Johnny but oversized on his boyfriend’s frame.

‘I look good in your clothes too, don’t I?’ Mark bats his lashes. ‘You really shouldn’t buy new clothes for me special anymore.'

‘Uh huh.’ Johnny chuckles despite running eyes down how smashing Mark looks in his garment and making a mental note to dress him in them more often. Mark pouts.

‘Are you teasing me?’

‘Never.’ Johnny beckons and pulls him into his lap. He’s so bewitched he forgets the food is arriving until the doorbell rings. Mark wanders to the bookshelf and runs his hands down the spines of Johnny’s collection while he unbags their lunch.

He picks out one of Johnny’s assigned literature books from when he attended high school in Chicago, bringing it to read while eating. Johnny wonders if he misses the normal mundane pleasure of going to college; knows he must.

Wanting to comfort but awkward at expressing it, Johnny slings an arm around his lover’s shoulders after their meal. Mark puts the book aide and twiddles his thumbs, looking at his knees.

Johnny raises his eyebrows, lip twitching. ‘Do you have something to say?’

Mark clears his throat and dares a peek, immediately returning his gaze to his hands knotted together under the heat of Johnny’s seductive stare, now graduated to openly flirting. Red creeps up Mark’s ears. Fuck, he’s so adorable it might actually cause Johnny’s death.

‘You were really sexy in bed.’ Johnny loses his bearings and the upper hand in one instant at Mark’s bashful confession. ‘Like, more so than I expected.’

Johnny growls and Mark jumps under his arm, looking up saucer-eyed.

‘You sure you want to stroke my ego like this? I can only get so erect.’ Yes—Johnny’s flustered into the territory of dirty jokes by now.

Mark bursts into obliging laughter though, making him glow, and nips playfully at Johnny’s wrist. The air hitches thoughtlessly in Johnny’s diaphragm.

Mark’s expression turns serious and he lets go of Johnny’s arm.

‘You know I’ll never bite you, right?’

‘Of course!’ Johnny says loudly. ‘Markie, I could never be scared of you. I trust you.’

His earnestness makes Mark hide a smile. ‘Brat.’ Johnny chucks him under the chin, wanting to tilt his face up and kiss that lopsided beam off.

‘Call me that again.’

‘What, brat? My love, do you have a kink I should know of?’

Mark sticks out his tongue. ’No, you old perv.’

Johnny clutches his chest and groans in mock agony, but secretly, the fluidity and ease of their banter, their _togetherness_ thrills him.

It shouldn’t feel like they’ve known each other forever. But it does.

They’ve been each other’s for just two years, and technically before yesterday they’d only shared one conversation. How is it possible—how is it possible that they already know each other’s love languages by heart?

Johnny can’t even remember the last time he felt avuncular emotions towards this person, saw him as his kid brother. It feels like a lifetime ago when both their lives were overturned, overnight, and he’s suddenly gripped by the sensation that he, too, has been asleep since that fateful day and only just awakened, kissed to life by the fire of Mark’s touch.

Their gazes latch, the magnetic current that sizzles between their bodies almost tangible. Johnny gives in to gravity and cups Mark’s cheeks, devouring his lips languidly before picking up his hand. He tenderly kisses the scar from Jaemin’s bite, so old by now it can’t possibly hurt yet tears fill Mark’s eyes.

Johnny thumbs them away, a knife sliding between his ribs. He doesn’t check the time, but tomorrow inches closer second by second.

‘Are you scared?’

’No, I’m happy.’


	5. Chapter 5

‘You know all of this belongs to hyung, right?’ Johnny isn’t clear what Mark means when he gestures down the length of his torso at first, then flushes upon comprehending. ‘This body, useless and lame as it is… after today, even if I can’t respond, you can use it any way you wish. I won’t mind.’ Mark’s voice gets smaller as he speaks as well, embarrassment rising between them.

‘I know you have your desires, needs,’ Mark finishes quietly.

Johnny finds his reply after a stilted moment. ‘I only desire you.’ Mark raises his eyes, stricken. Their naked expression makes Johnny blurt without thinking, ‘Besides, I’m not really into doing stuff with unresponsive bodies.’

What he meant was that he’d never take advantage of Mark in his crippled state, but he realises it came out wrong right away, confirmed by how those eyes shutter.

‘Hey, that’s not what I—’ He takes his boyfriend’s hands. Mark lets him but doesn’t return Johnny’s squeeze.

‘Then you can… do stuff with other people too. I won’t mind.’

Johnny seeks his gaze but Mark won’t reciprocate. Something flares in him.

‘You don’t care if I have other sexual partners?’

Mark winces at his belligerent bluntness but shrugs. Johnny’s throat tightens.

‘Fool.’ His tone roughens despite not meaning to be harsh. It pains and angers him that Mark felt the necessity to say that. Johnny wouldn’t be as generous in his place and it pisses him off, that god damn bleeding heart of Mark’s. ‘If you belong to me, don’t I belong to you too?’

His words seem to reach home as Mark tears once more. Johnny sighs and pulls him into his arms, trying to be gentle. Mark emits heart-wrenching wet noises against his chest, shivering.

‘I just want to please you. I want to take care of Johnny hyung.’

‘Soon,’ is all Johnny can comfort through the lump blocking his speech. ‘You’ll have all the time in the world to repay me once you’re cured.’

Mark’s sniffles only dry up as Johnny trails fingers from his nape to the erogenous zone behind his earlobe, replacing the touch with his lips. ‘Crybaby,’ Johnny whispers beneath Mark’s soft gasp.

They make out until Mark becomes less emotional, Johnny’s hands migrating to the position on Mark’s waist where they’ve already grown comfortable within two days.

‘I just don’t want your life to be on hold,’ Mark continues breathlessly after they break apart, lips loosened by Johnny’s persuasive ones, ‘I mean, for you to give up your life—‘

‘You are my life.’ At last, he spits out the confession that’s been dancing on the tip of his tongue since Mark awoke.

Because Johnny understands how it is to feel unworthy of, not good enough for the one you love most, like they deserve better. He can’t get better than Mark, not in this lifetime.

That intensity is back in the beautiful black eyes above lovely pink cheeks as Mark says, ’Then do one thing for me.’ He peers into Johnny like he can read the deepest parts of his soul. ‘None of it was your fault, so I want you to really forgive yourself. For everything.’

_‘Hyung is sorry. Sorry for everything.’_

So he’d heard when Johnny muttered that, long ago. Johnny feels shame curl his insides when he realises Mark recalls it all.

‘If anything, I’m the guilty party.’ Mark lowers his chin again, voice softening. ‘I wasn’t just interested in you. Though I knew you were already attached, that it was wrong… I coveted you for myself. I dreamed of you breaking up with Jaemin, felt ugly jealousy every time I saw him in the dorms.’ Mark’s sharp teeth sink into his lower lip, volume barely audible. ‘I’d never wanted anybody so much in my life. Didn’t even know I was capable of falling in love like that.’

His direct stare tears Johnny. Again he wonders how it’s possible for him to continue glimpsing so many new sides of this human he was sure he knew inside and out. It feels intimate, raw. Mark appears abashed by his admission, so Johnny hugs him once more, massaging his spine.

As if not wanting to depress him, Mark changes the subject in a way Johnny has learnt he’s incredibly but subtly sensitive and empathetic to others’ emotions.

‘Do you have hobbies, hyung?’

‘Hobbies…’ Johnny fumbles under the inquisitive tilt of his head. He doesn’t want to appear a loser, thus brags, ‘’Course! I have tons.’

‘Oh my god.’ Mark’s huge eyes get bigger when Johnny shows off the album of photographs he’s taken almost every day, lovingly titled and favourite shots edited or added with cute filters.

‘Delete it,’ Mark pleads about a picture of him bloody-mouthed enjoying a rare steak with gusto. ‘I hate you so much,’ he groans, covering his face.

Johnny can’t stop cackling childishly. ‘Rude; do you know how many people would kill for a world-renowned photographer like me to take their portrait?’

Mark purses lips and the mood is lightened, almost buoyant, both of them high on the simple drug of each other’s presence. But Mark is serious as Johnny rises to slice fruit for tea.

‘If it ever gets too much…’

‘Shh, baby,’ Johnny hushes. ‘I’ll disown you if you speak more on this matter.’

Mark hesitates, then mimes zipping his lips and throwing away the key. Johnny wants to bottle his candy-sweet smile. How can he stop giving, when it’s for this person?

‘I’ll try harder,’ his baby vows when Johnny’s back with the fruit and feeding Mark a bite after switching on some mood music on the stereo. The air-conditioned coolness and coital exertions of earlier are making him kind of drowsy but he refuses to fall into an afternoon nap and waste any time.

‘Idiot. Don’t push yourself.’ Johnny offers another morsel, probably overfeeding him but unable to get over the novelty ofpreparing him things other than raw meat and cat food.

Mark shakes his head, sucking Johnny’s fingers clean mischievously. ‘That’s not what I meant. I just think… it could be possible for me to be like Doyoung hyung.’ Thinking about it lights him up. ‘His control over the mutation is crazy. He’s practically human.’

Johnny pauses, heart stuttering. Mark’s excitement infectious as his smile. ‘I’ve been meaning to ask you something…’ he starts at the same time Mark says, ‘I was thinking about what you told me—‘

They both burst out laughing after an awkward second. ‘You first,’ Mark says gallantly.

Johnny ruminates, rubbing the light stubble on his chin. ‘At the cafe yesterday… I was surprised Doyoung could still transform into a cat. I thought the antidote was supposed to turn you guys back fully human.’ He studies Mark with vague unease, as if he might reveal that he too can shapeshift into his zombie form at will.

But Mark bobs his head enthusiastically, like he’s figured out this is a positive. ‘That’s what I wanted to discuss with you as well. I asked Doyoung hyung to try morphing into his animal form, and we were both sure he wouldn’t be able to, so it shocked me when he could. It didn’t make any sense at first, especially because _I_ feel completely human and I’m sure I’ve lost all my powers.’ He wryly air quotes the last word. ‘Then I remembered what you told me about him being able to bite Jungwoo without turning him? Is that true?’

Johnny nods, mouth dry and mind racing. It seems they’ve arrived at similar conclusions unwittingly.

Jaemin and Jeno’s reentrance into their lives confirmed a conviction, a hope Johnny held this whole while. There is such a facility, with scientists and government researchers working on the permanent cure. And judging from Jaemin’s account, they’re pretty desperate by this point. As desperate as Johnny.

Such a place exists. Progress has been made; there are other people, in high places, who care about this besides them. Mark’s right—this is good news.

Taking a deep breath and interlacing their fingers, Johnny tells Mark the decision he’s come to.

*

Johnny is already twenty-four while Mark has been stuck at nineteen for two years. He deserves to see his twentieth birthday. Like an invalid hooked to life support machines and ventilators—he can’t function like this a second longer. This isn’t a matter of being patient anymore—it’s always been in the back of his mind, the seizures Jungwoo confided Doyoung suffers. It’s apparent the virus damages the brain so long as it remains in the body. No matter how strong Mark and Doyoung are, it’s unsustainable for them to go on harbouring that side of themselves within. The toll it’s taken is visible to their caretakers.

There’s no precedent for cases like Mark’s and Doyoung’s. And Jaemin and Jeno—it hurt Johnny to visualise them stumbling around hopelessly, homelessly in the wild, the entire world having given up and turned their backs on them, no one else aware or caring of their plight and fate. Johnny couldn’t do likewise. Not just because they’d remembered him and saved Mark, but he saw them as family now, his little brothers. The two boys sacrificed days of precious humanity for Johnny, risked their lives to come back and find him, loyal to a fault. No matter what a long shot it is, Johnny has to at least try for them. All five of his younger brothers who rely on him.

They’re too pitiful—all of them. Trapped in this limbo, waiting. He knows it’s his call to step up, rise to the task that has revealed itself.

From what little information he gleaned from Jaemin, those people sound mercenary. But Johnny is confident his bargaining chip, of both Mark and Doyoung’s DNA, is enough to leverage what he’ll ask. And hopefully the key, too, to making a breakthrough for the cure.

From daily observation, Johnny knows the minutiae of Mark’s physical condition. And though there haven’t been many outward signs—yet—there’s a certain decline he senses more than sees, an atrophy that frightens him.

Mark has to feel it too, and is probably putting on a tough front so as not to distress Johnny.

Two years, Johnny thinks, shutting his eyes and searching the dark behind his lids. Two days. It’s funny how everything’s changed again, overnight. There’s a lightness prior unfelt, the bud of a fighting chance.

*

‘Smile for me, pet.’ Mark giggles nervously as he coos in a somewhat gross tone. Surmising from how his smirk broadens, he doesn’t mind being called that. Johnny snaps a few close-ups of his beautiful features in succession before getting into the frame and concluding with a joint selfie of them, his baby in the background with a lopsided peace sign. It’s for his phone wallpaper—he’d prefer to have just Mark’s face in both his lock and home screens, but that’s creepy for even him.

Later, Johnny finds Mark writing a letter. His boyfriend squeals when he peeps over his shoulder.

‘Dude, a little privacy?’ Mark squawks, offended as he covers the paper.

When Johnny demands who it’s for, he rolls his eyes. ‘Who else? Idiot, you aren’t allowed to read it until tomorrow morning.’

Mark looks so solemn Johnny laughs, the curiosity killing him. But he humours his lover and pleasure bubbles up inside at the thought that he has a love letter to look forward to in the bleakness of the next day.

‘No fair!’ Mark hollers as Johnny tackles him down and tickles his sides until he caves and buries his face in Johnny’s collarbone, kissing sweet pleas while clinging on to his body.

Johnny leaves him to write in peace, but rushes back into the living room upon hearing a low groan. Mark has his head between his knees, jaw set, a muscle in it ticking.

‘What happened?’ Johnny’s hands flutter uselessly over his body.

Mark tries to brush it off but another stab of pain attacks. ‘I’m fine just—fuck, I suddenly have a splitting migraine.’ His voice shakes.

Before Johnny can react, in the next instant Mark is tripping to his feet and dashing for the bathroom. Gripped by panic, Johnny lunges behind to find him braced over the toilet bowl, dry heaving.

‘God dammit, Mark.’ Johnny touches his shoulders, trembling. He’s never felt so sick with worry. Mark makes more retching sounds but nothing comes out. His skin is chalky and cold with perspiration. When it’s obvious he isn’t going to throw up a thing, Johnny sweeps his limp body into his arms as gently as he can and carries him to the bedroom.

He’s back in a heartbeat with painkillers and water. Mark is tossing restlessly.

He’s more lucid after four aspirin and reassures with a weak smile, ‘I feel better,’ though he looks like he needs something stronger, like morphine. Johnny strokes the hair off his forehead, other hand clenched into an helpless fist. Outside the curtains, dusk is approaching. It may be an optical illusion but in the waning light Johnny thinks Mark’s right eye has acquired a blue sheen.

Thank fuck, is all Johnny can think, boneless with relief when Mark makes a full recovery despite them expecting the worst, and even musters enough appetite to have dinner Johnny home-cooked.

Watching him happily eat what will probably be his last human meal in a while, Johnny still can’t figure out how, why and when this unassuming boy turned into his whole life. Somewhere along, this name became synonymous with _familiar_ to him, with _family_.

‘You’ve been very, very brave,’ he hears himself saying when they’re sitting in bed later, cuddling. ‘You know that I’m proud of you, right?’ Johnny ruffles Mark’s fluffy hair to hide the way his voice is unsteady.

Mark closes his eyes with a contented smile, tinged with bittersweetness.

‘That’s what I needed to hear,’ he whispers.

Johnny fits him into the space under his chin, and Mark nuzzles his ear over his chest, listening to his quickening heartbeat. Johnny slides a palm to palpate his too.

It’s because of him that Johnny is able to fearlessly take action, at long last. Remember me, he wants to say, but instead murmurs, ‘I’m here. I’ll be here when you wake up again.’

‘I know.’ Mark looks up at him, blinking, and it sounds like he’s saying, I will.

Johnny kisses him the last time, hand moving from his nape to cup his ears, both his hands. Desperately. Mark opens and closes his mouth when Johnny lets go.

‘Do you have something to say?’ he teases, lightly. ‘Maybe… that you love me?’

Mark huffs. Shyness looks good on him. ‘You wish.’ His laugh is melodic.

‘What about you?’ Johnny doesn’t expect to hear. ‘Do _you_ love me?’

‘Not really, you’re just my dongsaeng.’

‘I see.’ The brightness in Mark’s eyes doesn’t waver. He yawns, and Johnny grazes his toasty skin.

‘Sleepy?‘

‘Little bit.’

Mark takes off Johnny’s reading glasses and they lay down, pulling the covers up after Johnny turns out the lights. They fall asleep in each other’s embrace, intimacy soaking him to the core.

*

When Johnny wakes, heart lurching into place in that moment between sleep and reality, Mark’s right eye is robin egg blue and he’s sitting beside Johnny looking docile, his muzzle fastened over his mouth.

‘Darling?’ Johnny tries, voice tight, disappointment a glancing blow when Mark doesn’t turn his head, only goes on staring at the wall in front of the bed. Johnny doesn’t know what he was hoping for. He grimly reminds himself that they were lucky to even have gotten two days, instead of one.

Hating the way the muzzle looks on his blue-eyed boy, Johnny undoes it and Mark neither resists nor flinches when Johnny snaps fingers before his eyes.

Now they’ve confirmed their feelings it should be easier, but he dumbly entertains the wonder if it was all just a fever dream in the face of Mark motionless as a rag doll. He shouldn’t be ungrateful, Johnny affirms like a mantra as he heavily descends the bed to brush his teeth and fetch Mark the toothbrush and mouthwash he uses as the easiest way to clean his.

Mark is better off than Jaemin and Jeno. And he’s going to be okay. Johnny’ll make sure of that. He has to be strong, because Mark is relying on him, but—

Without registering, Johnny is punching the wall outside the bedroom until he sees bloodstains from his split knuckles even before the pain sets in. It feels like his heart is being gouged out his ribcage, the impact of Mark looking like his soul has left his body hitting at once. The empty hollows of his glassy eyes, so lost as if he’s disappeared somewhere into his own body, locked away in a room Johnny can’t reach or find. Johnny is still shaking after he stops hurting himself, clutching his hand with the other. He wants to yell, to scream in frustration and futility. He held himself back from breaking down when Mark was conscious, but there’s nothing stopping him now.

He finally gets his agitation under control, water stinging as he runs the wound under the tap. It scares him; he feels fucked, like he plummeted deeper in the last two days compared to previously. Inextricably.

The enormity of it is more terrifying than anything else. It must be unhealthy to need another person so much he’s about to burst at the seams.

Mark gazes through him with both black and ice blue eyes when Johnny returns. It may be deluded but Johnny catches a gleam in the impassive onyx pupil.

Flickers. Mark said he could sense flickers. Johnny’s imagination runs wild, fruitlessly. He plays one of Mark’s favourite rap songs on the stereo. No response. Johnny sighs and switches to his lo-fi playlist, coming back down to earth a little as he manoeuvres the zombie for a bath before they leave.

Johnny scatters bath salts in the tub this time, wondering if he’ll ever get enough of pampering his pretty baby. He kisses Mark’s temple while lathering suds, trying to repress memories of his brilliant grin and ridiculous laugh, mercilessly teasing Johnny.

He doesn’t contemplate failure. Can’t. He focuses on the picture of Mark going back to university with his idealism and self-possession and shining spirit. It makes Johnny smile.

*

Bile rises as he finds a vein and clumsily injects himself with the contents of the second vial. Mercifully the shot doesn’t make him feel different. There was a split second before sliding the needle in when he hesitated; it took his entire restraint not to run to Mark and bring him back again. It would be so easy.

Johnny dug his nails into his palm and reminded himself not to be selfish, that he had to come through for Mark, not let his brave boy down. Knowing Johnny as well as Johnny knew him, Mark had expressly forbidden him yesterday to submit to temptation. Though the risk was low, Mark wanted Johnny’s word that he would play it safe. Going to the headquarters of the facility Jaemin and Jeno had escaped from, Johnny isn’t sure what he’s in for after all.

Whether by coincidence or luck, Jungwoo took a first aid course years ago and has basic experience sufficient to draw Mark and Doyoung’s blood. They load the washed vials with the drawn blood, silently relieved Mark hadn’t moved a muscle as the needle pierced him. Johnny labels the vials with permanent marker and stows them carefully in his ice-filled cooler bag.

‘Are you all right?’ Jungwoo places a hand on his shoulder, searching and concerned. Johnny cements their plan with a firm nod. He knows the drill—he’s going to turn himself in; which is logically his fastest route to the officials he wants to see, judging from how Jaemin ended up at that place after he and Mark called 911 back then.

In the meantime, Mark—Mark will be following Jungwoo and Doyoung to lie low at Jungwoo’s parents’ house in Gunpo, Gyeonggi. It’s also a negligible chance the authorities will attempt to track down and capture Mark and Doyoung on finding out their existence, but they agreed it better to be safe than sorry regarding this too.

Saying goodbye at the train station, Johnny is suffused by the urge to wrench Mark into his arms. Instead he wraps them around the narrow shoulders and murmurs in the shell of Mark’s ear. ‘Be good for Jungwoo. I’ll be back before you know it.’

‘Don’t worry, hyung. And take care of yourself.’ Jungwoo smiles, eyes overflowing with gratitude. Doie stretches from the cradle of his arms and licks Johnny with agreement.

Johnny claps Jungwoo’s back, patting his own trouser pocket with a meaningful glance. He passed him the burner phone he purchased for them both earlier—possibly an over-paranoid measure, but it made them feel more secure.

Johnny gives Mark’s hand a final, reluctant squeeze. Mark stands unblinking, blank. He's wearing sunglasses to hide his eye and from afar looks gorgeously almost-ordinary. Johnny departs first, rather unceremoniously, turning to wave and steal one more glimpse. Fiercely in love.

*

In the taxi, Johnny thinks how for each other, they’ve been the only unchanging element in an ever-changing world. Regardless of the hardships and uncertainties, the initial devastation and grief that their lives had ended—meeting Mark was never a tragedy. Johnny hadn’t hated a minute of it.

Here they are, on the cusp of their future, and Johnny detects the first ray of hope since the day their trajectories intertwined. The form it arrives in is the realisation that it was a blessing they found, and changed each other into different people. People who were alive only because of love.

The taste of freedom decided him. _Patience_ , Johnny hears Mark’s laidback drawl. Of course, years are nothing. He would wait decades if required.

Their fairytale ending finally within sight. Not just for the two—but six of them. Where he was afraid, Johnny now discovers a belief so pristine it could only be inspired by one person. He’s awakened.

 _Hyungie_ , he hears in the clear, trusting voice when he closes his eyes and imagines the bag full of vials of the one-day cure he’ll be going back this way with, hopefully tomorrow—and later on, the actual cure, within nine more days for Jaemin and Jeno’s sakes. He’s truly convinced the key to unlocking it lies in Mark and Doyoung’s blood, and Jungwoo shares this faith. Johnny recalls the promise he made with Mark as the taxi carries him along to his destination. The promise of their forever, where they would look back on this stumbling block and laugh together about how it’d only been a bump on the road which brought their relationship closer.

Johnny takes the carefully-folded envelope containing Mark’s letter out of his breast pocket, where it’s been a warmth right over his heart since morning. He opens it up with bated breath. Like everything about him, Mark’s penmanship is lovable.

 _Dear Youngho hyung_ , he begins reading. _Thank you for the best years of my life_ …

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> do read until the end of this note if you can!
> 
> I’m sorry this chapter took a few more days, partially because it’s longer and also I think I got a little burnt out lol, but I’m relieved it’s finally done and grateful to all who patiently waited! I believe if you’ve read a certain number of my words, you know me well enough that I don’t have to spell out how thankful I am :”) just, every individual who put in the energy and large amount of time to read 30k words [or more] of mine is sacred to me <3 to know that this story, universe and its characters is loved and treasured by a number of people besides myself warms my heart immeasurably, and is the one thing which means most to all writers - that they were able to create an immersive and transporting world. some readers found the ending of the first chap a bit cliffhanger-y so I hope the addition gave you more closure. I’d grown unconsciously attached to these characters so I really wanted to give them a definitive fairytale happy ending even though technically the first part already had one haha. Seriously though, feel free to let me know if you noticed any plot holes lol I had to use my thinking skills to work out the best outcome for all of them, but I wanted to keep it somewhat realistic instead of for instance waking up the next morning to hear the announcement of the cure magically - bc I felt that would be a ‘deus ex machina’ and imo happy endings are more satisfying when the characters have to experience growth and put in some work to attain them :) ahh I just hope the sequel hasn’t disappointed y’all; like many other writers I often worry if my writing is effective in conveying what I want haha
> 
> Thank you so so much to each and every person who left kudos and support along the way with great trust in me to see this through, who already left them on the original oneshot, as well as those who read each chapter as it came out, giving me consistent hits that let me know people were interested, and last but not least any and everybody who will read it in the future. I intend to reply every single comment on this chapter since I don’t have to rush to write new ones, so do drop me a kudo and your thoughts if you made it here and had reading pleasure! If you have twitter, I’d be so happy if you help me share it there too, only if you find it rec-worthy ofc [I don’t have one otherwise I’d post a link to retweet haha]. Also, do check out the johnmark time travel au I posted a few days ago ‘as ever’ which I’m sure you’ll enjoy too if you liked this :)
> 
> Now for the ‘important info’ I asked you to read till the end of this note for lol - I know I said this wouldn’t have an epilogue but I actually thought about nomin’s arc probably more than I needed, and now have a snippet in my head [abt 500-800 words long] regarding the scene when they get the news of the permanent cure, which takes place before their 11 days end, and are summoned to return to the authorities to receive the cure and be changed back to human permanently. This scene is from jaemin’s pov but mark and johnny will be mentioned, and I intend to write it as an epilogue sometime in the future prob soonish. So if you’re interested in slightly more detail regarding how exactly their happy ending works out, you can look out for that short little epilogue hehe
> 
> I’m super sorry for how long this note’s gotten when I already rambled in previous chapters ;; I’ll be wrapping up after saying a few last things… this is something I forgot to mention earlier but I actually… don’t have deep knowledge of mark and johnny, although I really like them - I’ve been technically more of an nctdream-focused writer and even in 127 I prob know doyoung and jungwoo [who were my first 127 ship] a bit better. So I might have made characterisation or factual errors which I don’t mind at all being pointed out to me as I love to improve :) because I never considered myself an expert on these 2 members, it meant a lot that many stans and shippers of johnmark were able to read my interpretations of them with enjoyment. In fact, a few readers from this fic even went to check out my nomin fics, which moved me greatly. Special shoutout to ao3 user kiri_ah who literally went on a binge of not only my nomin but other pairing fics too!
> 
> I hope that in this time we’ve spent together in this space which was precious to me, your health has been well, and will stay well in the future also. Let’s keep it up both physically and mentally until we all receive the covid vaccine <3 lastly, pls continue supporting johnny and mark as well as ot23 this year too~!
> 
> You have my worship if you made it to the end of this note ;)
> 
> ps. i think most people already know but if you wish to check out my other works, I have a second ao3 account at gotchick


	6. epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so SO much to everybody who waited for this epilogue ;;; it ended up taking longer than I expected to get it up and I honestly wouldn’t have expected many readers to bother to tune back in or remember my plans for this last chapter since it isn’t even johnmark but nomin, and I just feel so much gratitude for everyone who’s going to come back in this story to read this bc it shows how loved this fic is. I won’t ramble on but I just wanted to let readers know something unimportant which is that a few hours after I posted the previous chapter, I found a tiny plothole which was that I didnt mention johnny hiding mark’s eye in the train station scene, so I simply added one short line in about mark wearing sunglasses there ^^; this was pretty much the only major edit I made to the chapter and at the time I made it only a small number of people had already read but in case anybody would be interested in this minor detail im just leaving a heads up here lol.
> 
> Also I know I thought this epilogue would be 500-800w long and im sorry it got slightly longer than projected but I still hope you enjoy owo

Jeno’s late.

Jaemin checks his watch—it’s times like these he misses having a phone most sorely. Jeno is out buying them food; one of the hardest things to wrap their minds around since they jailbroke out of the facility was that they had to become actual criminals. He supposes it doesn’t matter in the big scheme: they’re already fugitives from the law anyway, their lives were ending in less than two weeks and it wasn’t like they were going to spend their final days digging in the dumpster for scraps for meals, and Jeno only needed to pickpocket one person to get them enough money to last till now.

The eleven days flew by in a flash. Today is day ten, and the feeling of waiting never gets easier. Sometimes he insisted on being the one who went just to avoid this horrid dread, but Jeno is far too protective to agree often.

And even though it shouldn’t matter—even though technically after tomorrow they’ll be good as dead—it still feels as important as the first day.

At the start they nursed a ridiculous, unrealistic and naive hope, which has more or less disappeared fully. Trying not to think about it is like attempting to ignore the sun—the fact that it’s too late for them. It’s surreal to accept, but bar a miracle falling from the sky, tomorrow is their last day.

-

‘Nana!’

Jeno’s light footsteps usually precede his voice, because he’s unfailingly careful about their safety, so Jaemin’s hackles immediately rise to hear the call before seeing the familiar figure running from the distance. He flings arms around Jeno in sheer relief the moment he’s before Jaemin, checking his body solid and in one piece while whispering by his ear, ‘What is it?’

It’s insane. Unbelievable. Again, he gets the discombobulating sensation of being in a sci-fi movie as Jeno breathlessly describes what just happened to him.

It’s still hard to believe when he shows Jaemin the official notice with their names, even though he knows Jeno would never lie to him.

‘This whole time we were running… they’ve known where we were all along?’

Jeno shrugs, a bitter expression crossing his face. They got their memories back after turning human again, but neither of them recall trackers being installed in their bodies or anything.

To Jaemin’s relief, Jeno answers with cocked head, ‘It felt more like they were able to track us down if they wanted to… instead of like they’d been following us all this while.’ Not that it made any difference, his grimace echoed Jaemin’s thoughts.

Their surroundings suddenly appear different, the dilapidated abandoned building morphing from sanctuary into its original form in an instant. They’ve been moving between ‘safehouses’ like this, spending nights in dank warehouses or squatting in crumbling half-demolished parking lots. Thank fuck it’s summer because there was no way they’d be able to have even this freedom otherwise.

He misses their old life something awful. When the two of them lost literally everything else they had, the only thing they hadn’t was each other. Though it was an accident he couldn’t have controlled, though he’s never verbally apologised, Jaemin is aware Jeno holds himself responsible for attacking and changing him. The way Jaemin also lives in self-flagellation for the person he turned.

Jeno removes his jacket, revealing yellow-purple bruised arms. His flawless skin scarred like a drug addict’s the way Jaemin’s is too. Every midnight when they take turns injecting each other Jeno sets his jaw and never shows the pain and he’s always extraordinarily gentle when he gives Jaemin his shot. He kisses away the pain after, so very tenderly that sometimes Jaemin tears up at the futility of his longing and Jeno kisses his tears away too and they’re melting into each other’s bodies as if it’s their last night on earth.

Jeno’s stupendously dear smile is the only thing Jaemin registers in his daze now, that smile Jeno is always putting on for his sake to lighten their moods even when they had nothing to smile and laugh about.

-

‘What if it’s a trap?’ Jaemin hears himself finally rasping in a belated reaction to the gut-punching news. He only realises his hands are trembling when Jeno lets go of the paper, which flutters to the ground, and grabs them.

‘The official who gave it to me seemed pretty legit. We’ve seen enough of them to know, haven’t we? And,’ Jeno closes his eyes, ‘I trust Johnny hyung.’ His voice is shaky as Jaemin feels, but his dark eyes shining.

Jaemin can’t catch his breath, almost asphyxiating. His fingers move to fist in Jeno’s ratty tank and Jaemin hauls him close until Jeno wraps strong arms tight around his back. Jaemin breathes raggedly over the hickey he sucked into the spot above Jeno’s collarbone the previous night.

He can’t process what Johnny hyung’s done for them—setting the condition of finding and curing them both to the authorities. Considering this… if Jaemin hadn’t transformed their schoolmate, they probably wouldn’t have received salvation at this point after all. Everything seems to have come full circle in a manner which sends chills through his entire being.

Though they hadn’t dated long, they got close fast and Johnny was always both an incredibly kind lover and hyung. But after what Jaemin did, ruining his life in more ways than one…

He can see from Jeno’s eyes that he too senses Johnny’s forgiveness expansive in the gesture. There’s no longer even a trace of the jealousy there used to be in Jeno’s gaze when it came to Jaemin’s ex, just the same silent vow Jaemin has sworn to in his heart to repay their friend.

He had never been disloyal to Johnny before the day Jeno bit him, despite the suspicions Johnny held and any feelings Jeno may have developed. But after they met each other again in lockup… it’d just happened. Still, Jaemin never stopped wanting to say sorry to his ex-boyfriend for everything, all the hurt he inflicted on him. When he became one of the undead, it felt like a punishment he deserved. Jaemin could only seek bittersweet comfort in the new relationship he gathered Johnny had found with their old schoolmate who he remembered used to live in the dormitory with him and Jeno… Mark.

Johnny deserved happiness more than anyone else.

-

Now Jaemin sees their new lease on life with crystal clarity in Jeno’s completely different eyes. No longer the word they never said but felt every second of the past ten days. Fucked. It ricochets between them, around the vacant building—the sparkle of fresh hope, pure as the pristine grin of Jeno’s the grime and tiredness and their bedraggled state can’t touch.

Despite the brave fronts they put up for each other, they were so scared. More than turning back into zombies, they feared losing each other once more, that it’d be permanent this time. And what of the outbreak they might cause after both changing back? But when Jaemin broached the possibility of finishing each other off—committing joint suicide in less delicate terms—Jeno looked so heartbroken he couldn’t go on.

So they continued helplessly shooting the one thing keeping them human into the vessels of each other’s bodies, trying not to notice the life force between them slowly sapping away and being overtaken by despair. Even so, even amidst this terror and devastation—Jaemin had never in his twenty-one years wanted to live more. Not just live, but live with this person. As a human.

-

‘I’m here.’

Jaemin hears the deep voice of the one he loves most in the world. He realises he’s crying at the press of Jeno’s shaking lips against his. ‘We should go now.’ Jeno releases his body reluctantly and bends to retrieve the paper. He takes Jaemin’s hand in his larger one. ‘Don’t be afraid. I won’t ever let anybody hurt you.’

‘I know.’ Jeno’s unfamiliar cheesiness startles a laugh out of him finally. He falls into the pair of arms he’s more intimately acquainted with than his own.

The prospect of a warm home with Jeno… Jaemin could most definitely get used to this. Safe.

Saved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you once again if you read till the official end of this fic and enjoyed your journey. This was a writing experience that im never gonna forget for life - I hold all my experiences dear but this one just inspired so many new emotions and breakthroughs for me as a writer and person and I feel an inexpressible warmth for every person who joined me on the ride. I know there are a few readers who read my works of not just one or two but multiple pairings, because they find my writing worth reading other pairings they may not usually read for, and I never get the chance to say so but it makes me hugely flattered. I want to shout out to Gabi_lupin81 in particular if you ever see this - the comments you’ve left me made me really happy ;3
> 
> I posted a couple new short works recently and if you didnt know, I have 6 other johnmark fics up on this account [I just counted lol] and one on gotchick so if you were interested in my other works for them and haven’t you might like to give them a look hehe. Regarding the future of this verse [this fic], I actually considered that depending on whether readers want to read more of my johnmark specifically in this verse, instead of new AUs, I -might- write a smut oneshot set in this verse in future, which would be from mark’s pov and give a glimpse into their life together after he’s fully cured. But even if I did write this it’d be in the distant future lol and only if there are actually ppl who would want to read it ofc, and it’d be a separate oneshot and not another chapter in this fic as I don’t want to extend the wordcount of this work any further lol. In the meantime I do have other ideas for new au oneshots for this pairing that hopefully life will permit me to write haha
> 
> Lastly, this was actually in the notes of the previous chap but they honest to god got too long [im still eternally grateful to everyone who read till the end of those notes] and I had to cut out this bit, but the original got7 oneshot the first chapter of this fic was adapted from was written for a dear friend of mine back then - the plot was my original idea but I posted the fic as an ao3 gift for them and so it didnt feel right to finish without ever once mentioning this friend haha. This friend was like the mark to my johnny and its an almost impossible chance that they’ll ever stumble across this but if they do I just need to leave somewhere on here that I hold our old friendship as a treasured memory and obviously recalled it fondly while writing this :)
> 
> Thank you for everything, and especially for reading my words! Because of YOU, this internet stranger never felt like she was tossing inane words out into an internet void ;)


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